The Obfuscation Correlation Affair
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: The Man from UNCLE comes to town. Complete story.
1. Chapter 1

The Obfuscation Correlation Affair

by OughtaKnowBetter

* * *

Obligatory disclaimer: only in an alternate universe, and the train leaves in half an hour...

* * *

Gibbs set down the phone. Thus admonished, the handset settled itself into the cradle and didn't budge—fear was a powerful motivator. "Get your gear, people. We have a dead seaman at the Naval Yard."

* * *

Gibbs didn't bother to hide the tight-lipped frown. Seaman Adrian Berbeau was too young to be a corpse. The kid looked to be all of eighteen, probably just out of high school with peach fuzz on his face to match, and Gibbs wouldn't have been surprised to learn that his enlistment date was less than a year ago.

"Enlisted four months ago, boss," McGee confirmed, reading details from one of his electronic doo-dads. "Originally from Quaker Bluff, Oklahoma—"

Probably read every sea-going story he could get his hands on, dreaming of the sea, surrounded by Dust Bowl desert.

"Graduated middle of his high school class. Surviving relatives: a mother—"

Who would never see her son ever again. Not on this side.

"—father unknown. Two sisters, whereabouts unknown—"

Translation: the girls left the small town behind in an effort to survive the economic depression.

"No obvious connection with what went on here," McGee finished up.

Just a kid who tried the best way he could to make something of himself. Enlisted to have a decent job, see the world, and do a little good along the way.

_You did that good, kid. You served your country. Not as long as you deserved to, but as long as you could._

_ I'm going to make sure that your country thanks you by bringing your murderer to justice. It's not much, but it's the best I can do._

Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard creakily straightened himself from where he had knelt to examine the corpse, checking the reading on the long thermometer he had just used. "Several hours, Jethro." He did the calculations in his head. "Somewhere around four in the morning, I should say. I'll have a better estimate for you once I have this young man onto my table."

"I'll get the stretcher," called his assistant several yards beyond, swiveling back toward the coroner's wagon that he'd just exited.

"Thank you, Mr. Palmer. You do that." Ducky turned again to Gibbs. "Preliminary cause of death: single shot to the back of the neck, delivered from a high-powered rifle from a distance. I shall provide you with the definitive cause shortly."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows. "You got a bullet hole wide enough to drive a buffalo through, and you need more time, Ducky?"

The medical examiner favored his friend with a look of reproof. "This time shall not be any different than any other time, Jethro. You are well aware of that. I categorically refuse to offer a _definitive_ opinion until I have the facts to bolster my initial opinion. I offer you my preliminary cause of death as a courtesy only, subject to change upon further examination. There is indeed a hole in the back of this young fellow's neck that has likely severed his spinal cord at C-2 leading to almost instantaneous death, but I cannot as yet irrevocably rule out that he was dead before that fleshly crevice was created. The minimal darkening around the entrance wound suggests that the weapon that fired the bullet was greater than thirty meters away from the boy and possibly further."

"A sniper." Gibbs had already deciphered that piece of evidence.

"I have no doubt," Ducky agreed, "and I shall deliver the corroborating details into the very capable hands of Ms. Sciutto for verification." He doffed a nonexistent hat, both to Gibbs and to the victim. "I shall see you at Headquarters upon your return, Jethro." He moved off to assist Palmer with the last services that he could offer the serviceman.

Gibbs himself had other duties, and he moved onto the more immediate aspects of the crime. He surveyed the scene, watching his team process the evidence.

Seaman Berbeau had been guarding Warehouse 19; a post, Gibbs remembered, that was noted for its unending periods of boredom. Somehow it had developed the reputation for being a place where a misbehaving young enlisted man would be sent for punishment for some infraction not great enough to merit a formal reprimand. Not so onerous as the kitchen patrol, not even dirty enough to qualify as a place to send new recruits to work off excess energy—it was just…there. Boring as all get out.

What was inside Warehouse 19? Gibbs hadn't the faintest idea. Deliveries didn't happen frequently, he recalled. Perhaps once every six months or so, a package or even a large crate would arrive around dusk or dawn, to be hauled inside and placed on a dusty shelf somewhere, never to be viewed by man again. Gibbs recalled catching a glimpse of rows upon rows of shelving when he himself as a young and obstreperous sea biscuit had caught the disapproving eye of his lieutenant and had earned the post for a week. It had been one of the more unpleasant weeks of his career. Not of his life—no, there were episodes where he'd wished that he would only have to put up with being bored. It was just, to employ words that Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo might use: _annoying_.

Where had that memory come from? That had been years—no, _decades_ ago. Never mind. Gibbs had a better way to start the ball rolling toward figuring out just why someone was interested in Warehouse 19. "McGee—"

"Yes, boss. Accessing the database, figuring out what might be inside the warehouse that might of interest to someone." McGee was tapping fingers rapidly onto his tech toy.

"Ziva—"

"The lock to the warehouse has been picked," the Israeli Mossad officer announced. "There are scratches around it, bright and shiny to indicate that the intrusion was recent. I will investigate further."

Interesting. That confirmed that the warehouse had been the target, suggesting that the seaman had been a mere barrier to the target rather than the target himself. "DiNozzo—"

"Area around Warehouse 19, looking for the sniper's nest." DiNozzo scanned the rooftops that circled the area. "Could've been any one of those roofs, easy."

"Then get your tail up onto those easy roofs, DiNozzo, and check 'em out," Gibbs growled.

DiNozzo clearly wasn't fazed. He'd heard his boss growl on more than one occasion, and could identify a routine growl and one that had a little more bite to it. "On it, boss." He padded off in the direction of the neighboring buildings, military establishments every one of them, to investigate just where a potential sniper might have positioned himself.

Gibbs had a different objective: what had the murderer been after? There was always the outside possibility that young Berbeau had been the goal no matter what the preliminary evidence looked like, but on a military base Gibbs tended to doubt it. There were easier places to kill a kid, and Gibbs intended to assign one of his underlings to rule that out. Gibbs, himself? Gibbs would see if anything popped up inside Warehouse 19.

A guard barred his way to the warehouse. "Sorry, sir. You can't go in there. Commander's orders."

Not when Gibbs got through with him. "Then you get on the phone with the commander, son, and you tell him that this is an NCIS crime scene. And that if he doesn't want his superiors breathing down his neck, he'll rescind those orders before he takes another swig of coffee."

All right, so this guard, young as he was, had a little more intestinal fortitude than most. He managed to cover up the gulp of dismay that tried to emerge before dialing the appropriate number into the phone tacked onto the side of the guardhouse on Warehouse 19. Gibbs marked him as a seaman who would go far if he managed to outlive his stupidity. _The kid has guts…_

The guard hung up the phone, trying to keep his shoulders square. "You can go in, sir."

Gibbs gestured. "Ziva, McGee. Let's go."

The guard started to object; his orders had been only for Special Agent Gibbs.

A single glance; the guard subsided. _Not as stupid as he looks, either…_

Ziva and McGee followed Gibbs inside, into the cavernous warehouse, their footsteps echoing hollowly, making new tracks in the dust.

Warehouse 19, Gibbs decided, was larger than the entire NCIS Washington headquarters building by a factor of ten. It was huge, and it was filled with row after row of shelving, all packed with boxes of varying sizes and shapes. Some of the crates were too large to sit on shelves, and so nearly a third of the rows consisted of wooden and steel crates that would, depending upon their size, be plopped on top of each other to form vision-proof walls. Others managed to leave large holes in those walls, and Gibbs could swear that he could see through from one end of the warehouse to the other—if only there had been enough light to see with.

Gibbs advanced to examine some of the boxes stored there. Each was carefully labeled with some arcane alpha-numeric system that bore no resemblance to coherency, and behind him he could hear McGee choking in dismay over the small utilitarian desk perched alongside the wall.

"McGee?"

"Doesn't look good, boss. As far as I can tell, no one has ever cataloged anything in here into a computer d-base. In fact, there _is_ no computer. Everything has been recorded by hand. That's assuming that they recorded everything," he added dourly.

Gibbs darted his tech whiz a dour glance. "You got some way of telling what our perps were after, McGee?"

"Uh…no, boss. Except by going through the catalog. Card at a time." McGee indicated the wall of shallow drawers above the desk, each drawer presumably holding several thousand small cards that would inform the searcher where an item was located. The problem, it was clear, would be in determining just which card held the pertinent information.

Gibbs had no intention of subjecting himself to that onerous task. There was a reason that enlisted men had been invented, and junior NCIS agents fell into the same category. "Better get to it, McGee. I want to know what's been stored here, and why someone would shoot a navy sea biscuit to get at it."

McGee gulped. "Yes, boss."

Gibbs had a better task for himself: tracking down the foot prints that dotted the aisles. There weren't many of them; dust had settled thickly over everything, proving that the budget cuts had hit the housekeeping department of the armed forces as heavily as every other, and it was easy to eliminate almost two thirds of the shelving simply by following the path laid out. "Ziva," he called.

She materialized in his wake, sharp brown eyes examining and discarding things just as he did. The steps that they followed led down one stream of shelving and up another, crossing over and back as though the perpetrators themselves weren't certain of where they were headed.

"Four," Ziva announced.

Gibbs agreed. There had been four of them, all men by the size of the footprints and the length of the stride, and they had been most interested in whatever had been located in and/or around Space 134H. "McGee," he called out.

"Boss?"

"134H. Look it up."

"Right, boss." There was a suspicious pause. "Uh, boss?"

"What is it, McGee?"

"Uh, this might take a while. The cards are kind of, uh, messed up."

"Then straighten 'em out, McGee."

"Right, boss." There was a healthy dose of 'this is going to take most of next year' in McGee's voice. 'Despair' was also prominent.

Gibbs ignored him. There was a murder to be solved, a soul to be put to rest and a National Security question to be answered. He didn't know what was in Warehouse 19 and neither did a substantial number of people in and out of the armed forces, but somebody did and they had likely removed something significant. Knowing what that significant item was would go a long way toward solving the murder of Seaman Berbeau and, oh by the way, keeping the country safe from whatever.

Gibbs examined empty Space 134H. The remaining dust suggested that the box had been close to a bread box in size, large enough to hold a laptop computer and a little bit more besides. The height of the shelving bore out that supposition, allowing for some two feet for that measurement. Smears of dust made Gibbs wonder if any of the perpetrators had been kind enough to leave any fingerprints behind.

"On it, Gibbs," Ziva murmured, pulling out her kit and demonstrating yet again that she had mastered the technique of reading Gibbs's mind. She lightly sprayed the area with a lacquer-based fixative, snapping several pictures of the resulting smudges for the forensics portion of the hunt.

What the hell was going on here? What had the perpetrators been after? In all the years that he'd been a Marine and then associated with NCIS, Gibbs had never had the opportunity to do more than the rare guard duty for Warehouse 19. Sure, he'd heard the tales passed around the barracks: the zoo for the monsters that the mad scientists had dreamed up, which was where the Sasquatch came from. Strange machines capable of blowing up the sun. An old hide that the Loch Ness monster had shed, with scales that could deflect a torpedo. Best of all: a potion that would attract women for miles around. Old Gunny Rodriguez had come up with that one, swore that he'd seen one of the commodores using it one night before going out on the town. The whole boat had laughed at him—until the commodore announced that, come the end of his enlistment, he'd be mustering out and marrying this wealthy, high-end European chick with a title.

There wasn't much in the warehouse to either prove or dispel such notions. There were boxes and crates and the occasional tarpaulin. The whole place was as dead as a tomb, with nothing more than the occasional creak of contracting metal to let him know that there was a world outside with better things to think about. If there was a cage with the Loch Ness monster inside, the monster was taking a very long nap.

So what was so important here that it needed a twenty four/seven guard from the United States Navy?

McGee too had mastered mind-reading; that, or he'd come up with the same question independently. "Boss, these cards aren't going to give us much information, either. They give the location of—I'm assuming—everything in here, but they don't give many hints as to what's being stored. For example: this 'MCD' could stand for anything."

Gibbs shrugged. The answer was somewhere. Everything had an answer; the trick was finding it. "Let's see if anything will give us a clue. Where is this MCD thing?"

McGee consulted the card in his hand. "Aisle 459, Row M."

Ziva was willing. "Perhaps it will help us to understand this catalog system. It is like none I have ever known."

The trio hunted down Aisle 459, Row M—which, for some unknown reason, was located closer to Row Q than to Row L and contained boxes labeled with A, G, and X—and found several smaller boxes with labels that appeared to be decades old. Three or four labels had given up any pretense of sticking to their assigned boxes and had fluttered to the floor. Further evidence of the lack of housekeeping detail—no one had bothered to sweep them up.

"These labels weren't printed out, boss," McGee observed. "They're from a typewriter. Not a printer. See? There's white-out on this one, and on this label somebody just typed the correct letter over and over a bunch of times until it looked like a C."

"So they're old," Gibbs grunted. "_I_ learned to type on a typewriter." He impaled McGee with a look just short of a glare. "I did my reports on a Royal. A manual one, McGee. Not electric."

"Uh, didn't mean to imply that you're old, boss." McGee hastily backpedalled. "I mean, you're not. Old, that is. The paper is. You're not. Old."

"Find the damn box, McGee."

"Yes, boss."

Ziva darted her hand forward. "Here it is, Gibbs." She pulled down a small box that looked as though it could handle a baseball cap with room left over. The box was sealed, but the seal had been broken and then re-sealed. The paper label on one end of the box had been imprinted with the simple initials of 'MCD'. There was no other identifying marks that any of the three could discern.

"Should we open it?" McGee asked. "I mean, this is top secret stuff—oh."

Gibbs already had the box open, the seal slit through with a single fingernail. He flipped open the lid.

Inside lay a pair of thick glasses, the frames heavy and black in the style of the 1950s. The lenses too were thick, with silver sparkles shot through the curved glass. A small black box accompanied the glasses with slender wires wrapped around it in an effort to keep things neat and tidy. Gibbs lifted out the index card that he found inside, while Ziva went for the glasses. She tried them on. "Attractive, no?"

"No," McGee told her. "Boss, what is this thing?"

Gibbs held the card at arm's length, trying to make the printed words come clear. "Looks like MCD stands for Mind Control Device." He snorted. "This some kind of a joke?"

McGee took the index card from him, better able to decipher the smaller font. "Boss, this was an experiment from a while ago, like fifty years or so. The date is right here, see? Nineteen fifty-seven, December something-or-other. I can't quite make out the date with the faded ink. You put the glasses on, flip the switch on the box, and think about whatever it is that you want the person in front of you to do." He sniffed. "Pretty crazy, what they thought. They actually thought that they could brainwash someone in an instant. No wonder people settled on drugs and psychotherapy. Takes longer, but it works. Not perfectly, but better than something pretending to affect brain waves at a distance."

"Are you so sure, McGee?" Ziva, still wearing the glasses, plucked up the box with the wires, inserting the wires into the frames. She flipped the switch, and stared at McGee.

Then she sighed. "You were right, McGee. This device is incapable of affecting someone's behavior."

"You tried to get me to do something," McGee accused. "What was it, Ziva?"

Ziva smiled viciously. "To head-slap Gibbs."

* * *

The roof was significantly hotter than the street below. That was the first fact that hit DiNozzo in the face as he emerged from the staircase onto the flattened surface of the building that overlooked Warehouse 19. The second fact was that it would be a delightfully short examination of the forensic evidence: there it was, laid out in front of him, inviting him to kneel down and pluck up the shell casing. There was exactly one.

It wasn't hard to guess that this was the sniper's nest, and that a single shot was all that had been required to move the rest of the perpetrators past the late Seaman Berbeau. Pulling on latex gloves, DiNozzo carefully bagged the shell casing after first snapping several pictures of the scene. There was a single footprint in the dust but it was smudged and indistinct after several hours of exposure to the elements. DiNozzo dutifully measured the print; likely a size twelve men's, though it could be a size or two more or less, which eliminated some forty percent of the population of DC. _Oh, joy_. Going for a search warrant on the strength of that evidence—_not_.

DiNozzo leaned over the edge of the precipice, kept from falling by the thick stack of bricks that rimmed the square edge of the building's roof. Perfect angle for bagging one unsuspecting guard, especially in the dark of night. DiNozzo tightened his lips. The kid didn't deserve this. His only crime had been to be in the way of the perps. They could have tied him up, dragged him inside to wait for his relief to come get him in the morning. The sniper and his crew were not nice people, and DiNozzo—as he had so many times in his career—vowed to bring them to justice. It wouldn't bring the kid back, but it would prevent them from doing the same to anyone else.

Then he frowned. Hell of a good shot. The distance between this nest and Berbeau's position had to be more than five hundred yards. Do-able, sure, but it had to have been done by a professional sniper with proper equipment. Just another piece of evidence that this had been a well-planned excursion for several somebodies with very little respect for others.

Something glinted in the hot sun, something reflective and attached to the wall directly below him. DiNozzo leaned over to take a second look.

It was a small lens inserted into a tube, likely a security camera aimed at the entrance to Warehouse 19. DiNozzo resolved to figure out which desk officer had control over the footage, to find out if they would be lucky and see how many dark figures entered the warehouse after dispatching Seaman Berbeau. DiNozzo frowned; the security camera looked a lot smaller and hardier than anything he'd seen the Navy use. His tax dollars at work? He'd be speaking to his Congressman; Warehouse 19, the tail end of nowhere, didn't need a security camera on top of a security guard. Dust didn't require a lot of guarding. Somebody in a private security company was earning a healthy fee for doing little to no work.

There wasn't anything more to be seen up on this roof. DiNozzo had been lucky; this was the first of three possible locations and he'd gotten it right on the first try.

Now he had to go give Gibbs the good news.

* * *

"Ducky?" Gibbs walked into the morgue, seeing his colleague hard at work.

Gibbs never liked the place; it held too many unpleasant memories. It was cold, and it smelled of formaldehyde. No, he didn't really know if they still used formaldehyde, but anachronistic Dr. Mallard probably did out of sheer cantankerousness. It smelled, and he hated it.

The corpse was neatly laid out on the autopsy table, a bright light illuminating every crevice in the body. A careful Y-incision had already been carved across the chest, with flaps of skin pulled back to reveal parts of the man that most people were lucky enough never to see. The eyes were closed, Gibbs noted. Just like the medical examiner, to respect the dead as much as he did the living. Seaman Berbeau wouldn't have liked to observe an autopsy, and there was no reason why he should have to watch his own.

Ducky was unaffected. "Ah, Jethro. You're just in time for the preliminaries."

"Something wrong with the corpse, Ducky?"

Ducky lifted his eyebrows. "I remain eternally amazed at your powers of perception, Jethro. Yes, there is something 'wrong' with the corpse." He moved on to his main thesis. "The lethal wound was indeed the projectile injury to the back of the head. It pierced the spine at the location of C-3, and death was all but instantaneous for our poor young seaman. I find no other injury save a healing scratch to the left knee, most likely incurred some three days ago."

"What's wrong with that?"

Ducky turned around to face the NCIS team leader. "Jethro, it was a remarkable shot. It pierced the third cervical spine at the exact center of the area, shattering it with the impact and velocity." He cocked his head. "In my experience, injuries are rarely this neatly performed and certainly not at a distance. The site of entry is almost invariably a millimeter or two off to one side or the other. Not in this case, Jethro. The entry wound was as precise as if it were created by a computer with a microscope at short range, though there are no powder burns on the surrounding tissue to support the concept of a close range explosion."

"And DiNozzo found the shell up on the roof," Gibbs reminded him.

"Yes, well." Ducky peered at the x-ray of the hapless seaman's spine. "A remarkable marksman, then. I would recommend extreme caution, Jethro. I shouldn't like to see you targeted by the man who performed this shot. He appears to be rather good," he added by way of an understatement.

"I'll do that." Gibbs was impatient. "What else?"

Ducky snorted. "Always in a hurry, aren't you, Jethro?"

"Ducky…"

"Yes, I do have an additional detail for you." Ducky indicated the corpse. "The entry wound itself was unusual. I would have expected to find a large-ish sort of hole, consistent with a long distance projectile, the edges blurred and crisped by the bullet itself. Instead, as I said, this entry wound was clean and precise. Granted, those perpetrated from afar tend to have less of the splatter effect, but this had rather less than is commonly seen."

"Which means?"

"Frankly, I'm not quite certain," Ducky admitted. "It's unique in my experience. I shall have to research the literature to determine which weapon was the most likely culprit." He jerked his chin in the direction of the Forensics lab. "Perhaps Ms. Sciutto will have better luck. The bullet itself is already in her capable hands, and I understand that Special Agent DiNozzo has given her the casing."

* * *

Today's excursion into the cave known as Abby's Forensic Lab involved more microscopes and computers than bubbling Bunsen burners. To be honest, Gibbs admitted to himself, Bunsen burners didn't bubble, they flickered. And scientists and researchers tended not to use them any more; they had better and more high tech solutions that didn't emit soot into the air and had less of an inclination to go boom when least expected.

Today, however, there was a bank of something mysterious toward the wall of the lab where lights were blinking like a night time crowd taking pictures of a winning home run at the World Series. Abby was ignoring it, so Gibbs did, too. Instead he concentrated on the flat screen in front of her, the one that was carefully—and unsuccessfully—attempting to align two bullets.

Gibbs took a moment to concentrate on his lab rat, as well. He never realized quite how tall she was until he stood next to her. Somehow he always expected her to barely reach his shoulder; a pixie that would flit from test to test. Instead, there was only a few inches of height that separated them. Black hair, startling green eyes that sometimes were blue depending on which colored lenses she selected for the day's work. Gibbs had seen the Marilyn Monroe costume pictures that DiNozzo had snapped—_didn't think I knew about that, did you, DiNozzo?_—and never wondered about the various eager young men crowding around his lab rat. _Just toying with them, aren't you, Abby? You don't even realize that most of 'em couldn't care less about the magnificent brain you keep inside your skull. Brilliant little innocent, sitting in your lab like Rapunzel, waiting for someone close to your equal to come sweep you away. Gonna be a long wait, Abbs_.

He pulled his thoughts back to the case. "What'cha got, Abby?"

She scowled. "Not as much as I'd like."

"Then give me what you do have, Abby." Gibbs settled back to let the data flow.

"I'm running the blood samples that Ducky gave me," she informed him. "Some of the tests still have to finish running, but nothing looks positive. Our victim, whatever his faults, was doing his guard duty like a good boy. I'm not finding anything recreational about his blood at all, aside from the fact that he probably didn't want to be standing guard over a dusty old warehouse through the night. If I were him, I'd have gone for a caffeine buzz."

Nothing strange about that. "What else?" Gibbs pointed his gaze at the bullet-laden screen.

That earned another scowl; it was the focus of Abby's displeasure. "I'm not finding a match, Gibbs."

Okay, that too wasn't horribly unexpected. Disappointing, sure, but the database only had copies of bullets used in crimes. If this was a new weapon, straight off the shelf, there wouldn't be a match—

"That's not what I mean, Gibbs." Abby interrupted his thought, well aware of what her boss was thinking. "I mean, this bullet doesn't match any weapon known to man." She warmed to her topic. "I've compared the bullet parameters to every weapon ever manufactured in America, Russia, Israel, China, and a whole bunch of other countries. I've even tried the former Soviet Union. I've gone back to weapons that haven't been made for like fifty years, Gibbs! Nothing! Nada! Zilch! Zip! _Nicheva!_" She stared up at him. "Gibbs, somebody is manufacturing their _own_ guns. And they're doing a really _really_ good job of it."

"Gun running?" Gibbs's thoughts turned in the sensible direction. "That would fit. Warehouse 19 looks to be storing some pretty nasty things. They could have been after a crate of two of guns, something from a line that never caught on, thought they were easy pickings—"

"Gibbs, no," Abby broke in. "I mean, like this bullet has never been _seen_ before. I mean, this is from a gun that doesn't exist!"

"Doesn't exist?"

"Never been built," Abby confirmed, "except that it has. Been built, I mean. And used. Like that." She pointed at the screen. "Gibbs, this bullet—when it was being used, before it got flattened by hitting what it supposed to hit—I mean, it wasn't supposed to hit Seaman Berbeau even though that's what the Mr. Sniper Guy intended—"

"The point, Abby."

Abby pulled it back. "This bullet is nothing known to modern man, and it has nothing in common with bullets made decades ago, either. It is a highly structured piece of ammunition designed for distance and accuracy. The alloy contains titanium, something that is extremely unusual to find in a bullet; it's too expensive to use on something designed to be destroyed in use. That's the conventional thinking. The explosive powder inside which was used to propel the bullet is also unusual. The residual composition contains lithium, likewise something that is no longer commonly used in gunpowder." She turned to face him. "In short, Gibbs, we're looking for a gun that was invented within the last year or two and is likely known only to a single government at the highest levels. And I'm not even sure at all that it was our government doing the inventing." She made a face. "How are you going to find something that tippy-top secret?"


	2. Call Me Bambi

"Words of one syllable, McGee," Gibbs said, exasperated.

McGee obediently pulled up the plasma screen, with a clear shot of the camera that DiNozzo had found tacked to the wall beneath the sniper's nest. At her desk, Ziva leaned forward with interest.

The brick made a dizzying background, but the camera itself stood out in stark contrast and looked new and expensive. The metal housing the lens was not pitted, suggesting that the toy had not been long exposed to the elements.

"We have nothing in the database that compares to this, boss," McGee warmed up. "Not us, not the FBI, not the CIA."

"NSA?"

"Not that they're admitting to."

"Foreign powers?" DiNozzo asked with a sidelong glance at Ziva. She scowled back at him.

"No, not them, either." McGee changed the picture to some of Abby's graphs; specifically a mass spec output. The information on the screen meant nothing to the others, and Gibbs suspected McGee of adding it into his presentation simply to remind DiNozzo that the team needed McGee and that DiNozzo had better keep the sniping to a minimum if he wanted to get through this briefing in a timely fashion. "And here's the strange thing, boss: we can't figure out who the signal is aimed at or even how it's created. It doesn't belong to any known power, national or foreign. There isn't even anyone working on transmissions of this type. It's completely unknown, boss."

"So what you're saying is that we have someone watching Warehouse 19, and we don't know who it is." Gibbs could decipher that much of what McGee was saying.

McGee hunched his shoulders. Being the bearer of bad news was rarely fun. "That's right."

_Head-whack_. "Then figure it out, McGee."

* * *

This time Gibbs took DiNozzo with him. They were headed for the commander's office, the one who was in charge of Warehouse 19, the one who had assigned young Seaman Berbeau to guard duty on what would turn out to be the last night of his life.

Gibbs had selected his companion carefully. McGee he'd ruled out immediately; the young geek would invite ridicule and fear simultaneously from the commander. The ridicule would be from the man's lack of military background, but the fear would be over McGee's ability to plunge into whatever electronic secrets the commander was hiding. Everybody hid secrets; whether they were illegal or just plain embarrassing was another story. McGee would be able to ferret them out, therefore McGee got to stay in reserve for the moment. Besides, McGee had just found the actual index card belonging to 134H, and figuring out just what the hell that index card referred to was more important than accompanying Gibbs to pay a not so social call on Commander Graybelle.

Ziva, likewise. If there was anyone more likely to raise a few naval hackles, it would be an Israeli Mossad officer who could kick the butts of half the men on base if not more. No, this conversation needed the delicate DiNozzo touch. Did the man even realize how good he was at interrogation? Probably—but the rest of the world didn't, and DiNozzo liked it that way. Play the clown, play the juvenile skirt-chasing kid who would never grow up until he was old and gray and it was too late…for whoever it was that DiNozzo was after. DiNozzo had nailed plenty of perps that way, and Gibbs knew that he'd nail plenty more before his career was through.

Commander Henry Graybelle greeted them with the bare minimum of civility. He was a man with too much to do, not enough time to do it, who really didn't want to spend time sharing secrets with NCIS and would do his best to give away as little as possible. The commander wasn't tall, only coming up to DiNozzo's shoulder, but he made up for his lack of height with broad shoulders and it was clear that the muscles underneath the neatly pressed uniform had done more than their share of work in the exercise gym on base. Clear gray eyes looked up expressionlessly as the NCIS agents entered his office.

"Gentlemen." It wasn't a real greeting; more of an acknowledgment.

It was enough. Gibbs didn't need pleasantries, but he did need cooperation. The whole 'how are the wife and kids' routine was a waste of precious time, even more so when Gibbs didn't know Graybelle's wife and kids. He exposed his badge, aware of DiNozzo at his side doing the same thing. "NCIS," he added. "We're here about—"

"Seaman Berbeau," Graybelle interrupted brusquely. "Damn shame." He pointed to a manila folder on his desk. "You'll want that. Good soldier, and no, I didn't know him. Didn't stand guard too often. Did his share of the work and then went home at night, where ever that was."

DiNozzo leafed through the file. "Sorry, commander. I'm afraid that all of this," indicating the folder, "is old news. We had this information five minutes after we arrived on the crime scene."

"What we need you to do," Gibbs interspersed smoothly, "is to tell us what the heck he was guarding."

"I'm sorry, but that's classified—"

"Let's not go through this again," Gibbs interrupted. "We're cleared—"

"Not at this level, you aren't—"

"Who's your superior?"

Graybelle glared. "Captain Walker. But he's on a mission on the other side of the world; it'll take about eight hours…" he trailed off, watching Gibbs's every move with growing annoyance.

Gibbs hauled out his cell and tapped in a few numbers.

Graybelle directed his next question to DiNozzo. "What's he doing?"

DiNozzo shrugged, making it broad. "Why don't you ask him?"

Gibbs had already begun to speak to the person on the other line. "Yeah, Gunny sergeant Gibbs, here." Pause, for the other person to speak. "Is he in?" Another brief pause. "Yeah, it won't take—" Gibbs let his eyes roam coldly across Graybelle's face—"long at all." One corner of Gibbs's mouth quirked upward. "Admiral Fowler. Good to hear your voice, sir. Got a quick question: is there any reason that you know of that me and mine shouldn't be investigating a murder at Warehouse 19? Thank you, sir. Would you mind letting Commander Graybelle know that?" Pause. "Yes, sir; he's in charge of the warehouse. We're investigating the murder of the guard." Last pause. "Thank you, sir." Gibbs extended the cell phone to Commander Graybelle. "It's for you."

Graybelle accepted the electronic marvel as though it was a poisonous scorpion ready to pounce. "Sir?"

Pause.

"Yes, sir."

Pause.

"Yes, sir."

Pause.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good-bye, sir."

Gibbs knew exactly what was running through DiNozzo's head: six 'sirs' from Graybelle, in under one minute. It wasn't quite a record for Gibbs, but it came close. He accepted back his cell. "Commander?"

"The admiral," and Graybelle swallowed hard, "has directed me to give you all cooperation."

"Including access to the classified data," Gibbs pushed.

Graybelle gritted his teeth. "Including access to classified data," he acknowledged, looking as though he was being ordered to hand the information over to the North Korean government.

"Good." Gibbs settled back in his chair. "What do you know about Seaman Berbeau?"

Graybelle scowled. "Nothing. Exactly what I told you." He pointed at the file folder. "Never met the kid, never knew him. He was assigned to guard duty that night for getting into a shoving match with some of his buddies; that's what Ensign Bowdler told me. The rest are scheduled to serve their own weeks after this."

DiNozzo set pencil to the paper of his notepad. "I'll need the names of the others involved."

"Right here." Graybelle pushed the file folder forward. "You won't find anything. Just enlisted types, feeling their oats."

"You've started your own investigation?" Gibbs raised disapproving eyebrows.

"Wouldn't you?" Graybelle shot back. "I've got a warehouse filled with God knows what, a dead seaman, and a team from NCIS breathing down my neck. Yeah, I started my own investigation. I wanted to stay one step ahead."

"How about the other seamen? Anything there?"

"If there is, I don't know about it," Graybelle said. "Kids, every one of 'em."

"You got their files—"

"Here." Graybelle shoved three more manila file folders at Gibbs. "Take 'em."

Gibbs accepted the information, intending to turn the whole package over to McGee to see if the computer files matched what Graybelle had come up with. He moved on to more pertinent data. "What was in Warehouse 19?"

Graybelle made a face. "Failed experiments."

Gibbs lifted his eyebrows. All those boxes, all those years of wondering just what the hell was inside Warehouse 19, and that was it? Failed experiments? "Come again?"

Graybelle snorted. "You heard me correctly, Special Agent Gibbs. Failed experiments. Mistakes. Errors in scientific techniques, going all the way back to the Roaring Nineties, and I don't mean the Twentieth Century. Try a century before that, when scientists thought that they could conquer the world with reason and scientific inquiry." He snorted again. "A whole warehouse full of dust and worthless tech toys."

_Somebody didn't think something was so worthless_. Gibbs could hear that thought running through DiNozzo's brains.

"Do you have a listing of the items in the warehouse?" was all DiNozzo asked.

"There's a card catalog along the wall—"

"Worthless, without the key to the subject matter," DiNozzo interrupted, proving that he'd been listening to McGee's complaints on the topic. "Where's the computerized files that we can look at?"

"There are none." Graybelle scowled.

Gibbs sighed. "Let's not go through that again, commander—"

"It's the truth, Gibbs," Graybelle insisted grimly. "Those are all _failed_ experiments and the like. Do you think that anyone is going to waste valuable time transcribing the data into a computer database when we could be doing more important work?"

"Then how do you know what's in there?" DiNozzo wanted to know. "What if there's something important?"

Graybelle favored him with a sarcastic glare. "Nothing in there has been important for decades, Special Agent DiNozzo. Why do you think that anything has changed now?"

Gibbs folded his arms. "Because Seaman Berbeau is dead."

* * *

McGee insisted that the pleasant smile on his face remain there, and that it remain pleasant no matter what the provocation.

There was plenty to provoke him. Gibbs, upon realizing that Commander Graybelle was indeed telling the truth and that there was no way short of brute clerical force to persuade Warehouse 19 to give up its secrets in an organized fashion, had inflicted a half dozen enlisted types onto Special Agent McGee to perform that brute clerical force.

Six of them: four female and two male, and very little to differentiate the two sets. Every one of them, McGee was convinced, had seen the opening scenes to 'Private Benjamin' far too many times, for they truly seemed to believe that they had enlisted for the main purpose of going shopping.

"Oooh! D.C.! I _finally_ get to work in some place _civilized_!"

"I'm going to _have_ to put in for a permanent transfer here! Have you _seen_ that little _boutique_ shop down the street?"

"That's nothing! _Shoes!_ I simply _must_ have those charming _Manolo Blahniks_, the sandals in that green _snakeskin_!"

"_Dahling_, do have a care for that dump you're living in. Visit that print shop; perhaps something by Renoir."

McGee gritted his teeth. Biting his tongue seemed to help; it was less painful than listening to the mindless chatter. He'd tried barking at them just once, and it had been a revelation. He'd never before seen someone in uniform actually cry. Sniffle back tears, sure, and chomp down on the lower lip until it bled—but never cry. Never whimper. Never wail.

Not these little chicks. It had actually been one of the men who'd started, tears welling up into his baby blues and spilling out onto his face. It hadn't looked pretty, although Special Agent McGee was certain that Seaman Ryan Van Olnicker would disagree to the very top of his operatically tenor voice. McGee had already promised himself to avoid that scene.

This wasn't such a hard task, was it? All McGee wanted was for the group to copy the data into their respective computers. He'd requisitioned the half dozen laptops from IT, even going so far as to visit the department with a cart to pick them up. He'd used his own administrator passcodes to wire the machines into his own private little network and set up the database for the enlisted half dozen to enter every single letter, number, and date that appeared on every single card in the misbegotten card catalog system of Warehouse 19. Somehow, in some fashion, there was a method in the madness that was the card catalog of Warehouse 19, and McGee was determined to find it.

That meant enlisting the help of his beloved computer. In order for the computer to put its electronic brain to the task, someone needed to input all the data. Considering that the data consisted of more than a million small index cards, most of which had fading ink, McGee had been more than willing to accept help.

This was not help. This was hindrance, and it came in several flavors.

"You're kidding, right?"

"There has to be, like, a couple quadrillion cards here!"

"You expect us to look at every single one of these *)$&% mothers?"

Had these naval recruits even gone through basic training? Somehow McGee doubted it. No one could survive basic training without learning how to take an order. Unless…McGee had heard a rumor of a navy training officer who'd gotten himself hauled off to the looney bin after a particularly _challenging_ class of recruits.

It couldn't have been.

No way.

Impossible.

_Crap_.

Special Agent McGee, however, was no mere naval training officer. He was a special investigative agent in NCIS, trained to handle people. He'd had advanced education in interrogation techniques. He'd done advanced studies in how to handle witnesses, and perps, and all sorts of people. He could do this.

This required a soft touch. Shouting would be counterproductive. Polite requests would result in the work getting accomplished. "All right, everyone take a stack of cards from the pile—"

"How big a stack?"

"How do you turn on the computer? I don't see a power button."

"This screen isn't big enough."

"Will reading hurt my eyes?"

"Can you get Workman's Comp in the Navy?"

"Do we have to go through _every single one_ of these _stupid_ cards?"

McGee tightened his lips. He would not crack! "Not every one. The computer will be looking for a correlation between the data entries—"

"_Exactly_ how many do we have to do?"

"What's a correlation?"

"I _still_ can't find the on/off switch—"

"Can I wear civvies tomorrow?"

McGee went for the easiest question. "There's the power button. Push it once—no, just once, Bricker!"

"Don't call me by my last name! I _hate_ my last name! Call me _Bambi_!"

It was going to be a very long day.

And it would start all over again in the morning.

McGee wondered if there was another bed in the looney bin, waiting for him. He trudged toward the garage, to drive home, to hide under the bed covers of his nice, safe bed in his nice, safe apartment.

* * *

Jethro Gibbs pursed his lips as he hung up the phone. He set down his first cup of morning coffee, scowling. What the hell did Leon Vance want now? Gibbs was in the middle of a case, and had better things to do. Sure, this wasn't the murder of an admiral or even a commander, but the kid was part of the Navy and deserved whatever justice Gibbs could get for him.

Gibbs trotted up the stairs to Vance's office—_used to be yours, Jenny. What the hell happened that your life got cut short? Not supposed to be that way_—using the excuse for some exercise that he wouldn't get. What was today's adventure going to be? Vance think he was going to yank Gibbs's chain, drag him onto some other cockamamie case that some congressman decided took priority over a navy man's lost life? There would be words spoken if that was the situation, and they wouldn't be pretty.

The carpet under Gibbs's feet got just that much thicker, demonstrating that the man inside the office held a little more power and prestige than usual. The receptionist outside the inner sanctum waved Gibbs in, clearly expecting him and letting him know that dawdling was not part of the game plan. Fine with Gibbs; he wanted to get back downstairs and back to his case.

Vance hadn't changed the office much since he'd taken over, although it had acquired an indefinably masculine touch. Maybe it was the picture on the wall; Jenny had always had a thing for some of the French painters, not that Gibbs could keep any of 'em straight. The leather-backed desk chair didn't look any different but it seemed to fit Vance better. Jenny had always looked a bit like an elf perched on an over-sized throne.

Vance was not alone, and the words that were on Gibbs's lips died unspoken, to be replaced by something more visitor-friendly. "Director Vance?"

The guest had risen smoothly from his chair in front of Vance's desk, keen eyes taking in every aspect of the new arrival. Gibbs made his own assessment: not young, perhaps around Ducky's age, and clearly in astonishingly good shape. There was no hauling himself to his feet, joints creaking with arthritis. Somehow this man had managed to escape the ravages of the decades, most likely by constant exercise and attention to health. He was the shortest man in the room, with a full head of hair gone silver gray, and wore his business suit with an ease that spoke of familiarity with the upper echelons of power. Gibbs recognized the type: spook. Not only that, he was _upper_ class spook, the type that got sent into impossible situations and managed to come out not only alive but with the prize.

Vance made the introductions. "Special Agent Gibbs, this is Napoleon Solo, from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement."

Yup. Nailed it in one. The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement—U.N.C.L.E., for the well-informed—was indeed one of those shadowy organizations charged with keeping the world safe on a global scale. Gibbs had run across one, maybe two, of those types during his years overseas and had come away reluctantly admiring the skill. Sure, they had tech toys that would have had McGee drooling into his coffee but that wasn't what made them good. It was sheer, flat-out quality talent, recruited from every country around the globe.

Solo extended his hand. "Special Agent Gibbs. A pleasure to meet you. You have a most impressive file."

Two could play at this game. Gibbs allowed his eyebrows to inch upward. "And why would you be reading my file, Mr. Solo?"

Solo tilted his head: _touché_. "I make it a practice to keep up on the doings of people who might influence my sphere." Before Gibbs could question what that meant, Solo spoke again. "I have a colleague who has gone missing, Special Agent Gibbs. Granted, this is an occupational hazard, but he generally tends to reappear within a few days."

"And this time he hasn't."

"Exactly," Solo confirmed.

"What was he working on?" _And, by extension, how does that affect me and mine?_

"Good question." Solo nodded. "Actually, he wasn't working on anything. We're both retired from active duty."

Right. The only way agents such as the one sitting in this office 'retired from active duty' was in a coffin, and the coffin was usually part of a closed casket ceremony. Sure, one of them might back away, try to live a different lifestyle for a bit. But, like Mike down in Mexico, the old habits always reared up bit 'em in the ass sooner or later. That suggested that somehow an old case belonging to Solo's missing colleague was crawling up out of the trash can and begging for attention.

There was still some information missing—such as how Solo's problem affected Gibbs—and Gibbs wanted to know what it was. "I presume your missing colleague has something to do with me."

"Not exactly," Solo replied. "More like one of your people."

Gibbs shot a glance at Director Vance. _Why didn't you call my people up here with me? Get this over and done with, so we can go back to work?_ "Which one?"

Solo didn't exactly meet Gibbs's eyes. "See for yourself." He pushed a manila file folder toward Gibbs.

The dry details were uppermost: the birthplace was Russia—Soviet Union, to be exact. The date of birth was well before the break up of the union, and supported Solo's contention that his missing agent was indeed of retirement age. Not particularly tall, and not particularly heavy. The home address showed that the missing agent spent his sleeping hours in a place in Manhattan which meant that no matter what, UNCLE paid a nice pension. Gibbs grunted under his breath. They had to, or this man had made a small fortune some where along the line. Places in Manhattan didn't come cheap. What the hell was going on? Why was this Solo fellow in Vance's office?

Gibbs turned the page to see a photo of the man—and stopped dead.

This was not the file of Solo's missing agent. Dr. Donald Mallard's guileless blue eyes stared out at Gibbs from the heavy photographic-quality paper. It was Ducky; of that Gibbs had no doubt. There was no mistaking the bright blue eyes, the wispy hair that couldn't decide whether to remain dirty blond or meander into silver. No spectacles, but Ducky only used his when reading reports. The line of the chin, the set of the ears—Ducky. It was all Ducky.

"No, Agent Gibbs." Solo clearly was an expert in mind-reading. "That photograph was taken three years ago, on July fourteenth. I was there when it was done; I was elected to suborn my colleague into updating his file. That picture, Agent Gibbs, is of UNCLE agent Illya Kuryakin."

* * *

He, Jimmy Palmer, was an absolute idiot. A moron. An imbecile, and foolish at that.

It had been a simple question, and it deserved a simple answer. Not someone stuttering over their tongue, unable to get a single word to emerge in a state of coherency after Gibbs had bellowed through the phone, "Well, where the hell is he, Palmer?"

The phone conversation had gone downhill from there. Jimmy didn't think that it was his fault that Dr. Mallard had called in sick that morning, but then again, maybe it was. Why else would Gibbs be yelling?

Of course, Gibbs yelled at everyone. It was his way of saying, 'I care'. He yelled at his field agents, he yelled at suspects, he even yelled at Director Vance.

The only one he didn't yell at was Dr. Mallard. No one yelled at Dr. Mallard. The man simply wasn't the type to be yelled at. All right, there was that one time, but Special Agent Gibbs wasn't really himself right then. Stress. Lots of stress.

Then Tony DiNozzo came barreling down to the morgue, Ziva on his heels, demanding to know when and why and how Dr. Mallard had called out and why didn't Gibbs know about it and…and…

It had been on Jimmy's voicemail, and fortunately he hadn't deleted it. It had taken him three tries and a threat to fetch McGee to remember his voicemail pass code correctly, and then Dr. Mallard's voice had issued forth on the speaker, informing his junior associate that his health precluded his attendance at NCIS headquarters today. That was it; no details, no explanation, just a terse snippet of data followed by a perfunctory phrase of appreciation for Jimmy's admittedly meager input into the process. Tony had jotted down the information, warned Jimmy not to delete the message or even touch the phone, and had dashed off with Ziva to presumably confer with Gibbs.

Jimmy looked around the morgue. It suddenly seemed a scary place without Dr. Mallard to run interference. Dr. Mallard always spoke to his patients, and to him they spoke back. They spoke of their gratitude for his interventions, for his meticulous attention to the details of their death that would bring their murderers to justice. Jimmy could sense the caring.

Not for him. He wasn't Dr. Mallard, and he had a lot of learning left before he could even approach the pathologist's skill.

For Jimmy Palmer, the corpses were laughing. It wasn't a good sound.


	3. Confusion

It shouldn't take four highly trained NCIS agents to check on one aging pathologist, DiNozzo reflected. Yet here they were, risking life and limb to Gibbs's grimly frantic driving skills, taking corners on two wheels and praising the tenacity of the seatbelts that kept them inside the car and not flying out through a smashed car window.

The phone call that had preceded the excursion had been equally as alarming: it hadn't been answered and neither had the six calls that had followed. Well, it had, DiNozzo reflected, but then again an answering machine didn't really qualify as being 'answered'. Not in DiNozzo's book, anyway. Answering machines were for screening calls to decide which of the ladies in his little black book he wanted to be seen with during the upcoming weekend.

Gibbs pulled up in front of Ducky's elegant home, taking an extra split second to make certain that the tires didn't squeal. A noise such as that, DiNozzo decided, would be uncouth and uncalled for outside of the small mansion complete with tall and stately white columns. The rhododendrons to either side of the half set of steps leading up to the porch seemed to agree. Even the fear that the lack of response had elicited wasn't enough to justify a tire squeal at the Mallard domicile.

Gibbs took those entranceway steps two at a time before succumbing to the subdued refinement and slowing to place a polite knock upon the door instead of the ham-fisted pounding that any other house would have received.

No answer. Gibbs knocked again, harder, exchanging a look of concern with his team. Manners and good breeding were all very well, but tended to take a back seat when there was a strong possibility that their medical examiner had been abducted from his very home—

The door swung open. Dr. Mallard stood there, a beige robe tossed hastily over his shoulders and his hair only pushed into place by fingers sliding through the strands. He squinted at them against the sunlight. "Jethro?"

"Ducky?" Gibbs stared at the man, almost as if he couldn't believe that his friend was standing in the doorway in front of him. "Ducky, you're all right?"

Ducky blinked, and frowned. "Not exactly, Jethro. You may recall that I announced to Mr. Palmer that I was taking the day off to recover. A minor thing, really, most likely an enterococcal bacteria of some sort, possibly a strain of the Norwalk virus—"

"No, I mean, you're really all right?"

The underlying distress penetrated, and Ducky raised his eyebrows. "I take it that something untoward occurred, and you were concerned for my safety?" Then he frowned. "Does it have something to do with that unfortunate chap from the warehouse? I could arrange for a colleague to perform the autopsy, should the need be urgent—"

Gibbs interrupted. "Ducky, it was you!"

"Me? Jethro, I assure you, I am quite all right. Nothing has happened, either to me or to Mother." He cast an automatic glance toward the interior of the home. "Mother has been in her room most of the day, pouting that I have not been dancing attendance upon her and her whims." He made a face. "Perhaps now that you have seen that I am indeed indisposed, we could perhaps continue this conversation in the office on the morrow? I suspect that I might have additional insight for you once I've completed that poor fellow's autopsy."

Gibbs wasn't finished, and neither were DiNozzo, Ziva and McGee. Gibbs dropped his voice to a whisper. "No one inside, Ducky?" _Holding your mother hostage against your good behavior?_

Ducky's eyes widened. "Good heavens, no, Jethro! No, Mother and I are quite alone. There is no need for—"

"Search the place," Gibbs ordered his agents.

"Jethro—" Dr. Mallard sighed in exasperation, giving in to the inevitable. "Very well. Search. But I warn you, Mr. DiNozzo had best take care with Mother's good china. She had it out last night, thinking that Lady Emily might be coming to tea. Lady Emily," he added dourly, "passed away six years ago. Mother is not in the best of moods at the moment. She was quite put out, thinking that Lady Emily was snubbing her."

"I see it, Ducky. I'll be careful—"

"_I'll_ search the dining room, Tony," Ziva interrupted. "You go upstairs."

"And deal with Mrs. Mallard?" DiNozzo shuddered, and turned to the junior member of the team. "You do it, Probie."

"Tony—"

"McGee, DiNozzo, both of you, upstairs," Gibbs ordered curtly. "Ducky, you see anything recently? Any strange cars in the area? People watching? Driving by the house?"

"No, of course not, Jethro," Ducky said. "Perhaps we might continue this interrogation inside?" he added grumpily. "What is this all about?"

Gibbs scanned the interior of the parlor, watching as Ziva disappeared into the dining room and DiNozzo and McGee ascended the stairs. DiNozzo heard the final lines drift into the distance. "We had a visit from the man from UNCLE."

* * *

DiNozzo restrained his impulse to pull his service weapon. Ducky had told them that only his crazy mother was at home with him, and DiNozzo believed him. If there were someone upstairs holding the old lady hostage, Ducky would have been giving off signals like a roadside flare. Gibbs would have been right beside them, ready to take down whoever needed taking down.

No, the real reason that Tony DiNozzo wanted his weapon in his hand was something a good deal more real. Several somethings, actually. Dogs. Welsh Corgis. Hell-hounds. Four of 'em, all as crazy as Mrs. Mallard and twice as vicious.

"Where do you think they're hiding?" McGee had the same thoughts as DiNozzo.

"I don't know, McGee. Why don't we look?" DiNozzo struck a pose. "Oh. Right. That's what we're doing: looking." He gestured. "Go ahead."

"You, first."

"Afraid, McGee?"

"Hell, yes. Aren't you?"

"Of a couple of little puppy dogs?"

"Tony, one of those little monsters is named Tyson, and it's because he has teeth that he not only knows how to use, but has used in the past. None of those canines are safe."

DiNozzo started to object, and thought better of it. There was only just so far that he could carry a joke, and this one had already exceeded its shelf life. Those damn little balls of fur were a menace to anyone not carrying the last name of Mallard. Or Gibbs, too, but that was different. Gibbs was twice as dangerous without half trying. "Where do you think they are?"

"Outside, I hope."

"Nope. They would have come round to the front when we arrived."

"Locked up somewhere?"

"Maybe." DiNozzo cocked his head. "Like, maybe in there." He pointed at a closed door further down the hall. "Go look inside."

"Me? You do it."

"Hah. Not a chance, Probie. You know how much these pants cost? _And_ I just had 'em dry-cleaned."

"Maybe I just had my pants dry-cleaned, too, Tony. How about that?"

"You?" DiNozzo snorted. "You don't even know where the nearest dry cleaner is to your place, McGee."

"Do, too!"

"Yeah? Where?"

"On the corner."

"Which corner?"

"The…" McGee tried to think.

"Hah." DiNozzo had nailed the junior agent. "There are three dry cleaning places within walking distance of your place, McCleaner's, none of which have names. Two are run by Taiwan immigrants, and the third by a man who was born here—"

"All right!" McGee gave up. "You win."

"Which means that you get to investigate Mrs. Mallard's dogs." DiNozzo gestured. "After you, McKibble."

McGee advanced. He pushed open the door, trying to slide it open just enough that he could see but none of the dogs within could reach out and bite a chunk out of his leg.

So far, so good. DiNozzo heard a quiet growling from within, but McGee didn't do anything more than stiffen his back, so DiNozzo chose to take that as a good sign. It meant that the wild beasts in the room hadn't yet decided to rush the door _en masse_ and break it down, romping over the still-living corpses of the two NCIS agents. "McGee?"

"They're looking at me." McGee's voice didn't quiver in fear, but it was a near thing.

"Anybody else in there?"

"If they are, they're dead."

"You see a body in there?"

"Nope."

"Then I think it's safe. Where's Mrs. Mallard?"

"Not in there."

"Too bad. She's the only one that can stand them."

"Except for Gibbs."

"True," DiNozzo allowed. "I think they're afraid of him, instead. How about we finish checking out the rest of the upstairs, and—"

"Hey!"

It happened. The Welsh Corgi hive mind—akin to the Borg, McGee would later insist—chose that moment to escape the confines of the single room. Four small but muscular bodies, prized for their ability to contribute in a meaningful fashion to the raising of cattle much larger than they, arrowed through the door.

McGee went down with a yelp. They ran right over him, and McGee was grateful that not one of the furry monsters paused to taste his flesh.

DiNozzo fared better. With McGee's downfall to serve as warning, DiNozzo leaped to the side of the hallway, jostling and then grabbing for the delicate porcelain figurine on the side table before it could join him in his downward progression. His shoulder hit the carpeted floor; the figurine did not, and DiNozzo would later swear that the chip off of the lady's porcelain nose had been missing well before his chance meeting with her.

* * *

"What's all this about, Jethro?" Ducky wanted to know, leading the NCIS agent into the drawing room. "You mentioned something about UNCLE? I presume that your reference is to the agency rather than any relationship to which you or I can lay claim." He seated himself on the edge of the divan, both feet on the floor and an arm resting lightly along the back.

Gibbs took a chair opposite, well aware of Ziva slinking through the rest of the house, searching for anyone who might be in his medical examiner's home without permission. At this point, Gibbs doubted that Ducky was trying to cover for any hostage-takers but there was no benefit to a lack of thoroughness. There was something, though; something that Gibbs couldn't quite put his finger on. Something that had Dr. Mallard on edge, though he was doing his best to wrestle the emotion into submission. Perhaps an acute case of needing to be home in bed, where he was trying to be when Gibbs and team disturbed him? In that case, the best thing that Gibbs could do would be to finish up the perusal of Ducky's home, apologize for getting worked up over nothing, and get out to let the man recuperate in peace—not that he'd get much peace with Mrs. Mallard around.

Speaking of which, where was the lady—

"Get out! Get out of my house, you ruffian!"

There she was, emerging from the formal dining room, brandishing an umbrella that had seen better days, Ziva trailing behind and extremely apologetic that she'd stirred up the old lady. The woman was likely in her nineties, Gibbs thought, wondering if he'd ever heard Ducky mention the exact number. Spry for her age: the umbrella took out a small gilded frame with an old black and white photograph of a much younger couple—Ducky's parents, back before the medical examiner was anything more than a gleam in this woman's eye. Ziva dove for the item, snatching it out of the air just before it reached certain doom on the tiled floor between the dining hall and the drawing room.

White-haired, still with the bloom of an English rose in her cheeks—and irate.

"Ruffians, all of you!" Mrs. Mallard shouted, waving the umbrella in the air like a dueling sword. "I'll show you better manners! I'll teach you to invade a lady's boudoir! Get out of my house!"

"Mother!" Ducky exclaimed, horrified. "Mother, these are our guests! This is Special Agent Gibbs!"

That halted Mrs. Mallard. A vague fog passed over her face; clearly the dowager of the house was trying to retrieve the memories. "Special Agent Gibbs?" she asked.

Gibbs chuckled, not cowed in the least. Of all the weapons he'd been threatened with, an umbrella was not high on the list when it came to lethality. "That's right, ma'am. Leroy Gibbs, one of your son's friends."

"Yes," the lady mused, biting her lower lip in frustration, her anger calming. "Mr. Gibbs. Royal Navy, retired?"

"No, ma'am." Gibbs wasn't going to give up his unit, not even for Mrs. Mallard. "NCIS. Marines."

"Oh. Yes. Donald's friend." Mrs. Mallard finally placed him. "Where is that dratted boy? Always wandering off. Never listens to his mother. What is the world coming to?"

"I'm sitting right here, Mother," Ducky reminded her testily. "Jethro, Mother is having a rather bad day. If you don't mind…?" he pushed.

It was clear that even if Ducky's doppelganger was missing, Dr. Mallard himself was present and accounted for, though under the weather. Gibbs pushed himself to his feet. "Glad to see you're okay, Ducky." He raised his voice. "DiNozzo! McGee! Get down here—"

It wasn't his two agents that made their appearance, nor responsible for the noise. Four Welsh Corgis bounded into the room, growling and snarling.

"Tyson!" Mrs. Mallard brightened. "Contessa! Where have you naughty dogs been?" She plopped down onto the sofa where Gibbs had been sitting and patted the cushions beside her. "Come here and sit with Mother."

Three of the dogs hopped up beside her and snuggled in, each one lifting a lip to aim a snarl in the direction of the other humans in the room. Tyson, the remaining dog, chose to snarl first before he landed in Mrs. Mallard's lap.

Ducky rolled his eyes to the heavens in a silent plea for mercy.

DiNozzo and McGee stumbled in after the pack. "Ducky, I'm sorry," were the first words out of McGee's mouth. "They got out—"

"Yes, I'm quite aware that they're out, Agent McGee," Ducky interrupted. "It will take a great deal of effort to return them to their lair. Mother, if you don't mind…?"

"Get out!" she snapped back at him. "I don't know who you are, but you are probably up to no good! Get out of my house!"

"Jethro, please?" Ducky was begging to end this scene. "Mother really needs to rest, as do I."

He did. Gibbs rarely remembered his friend looking so out of sorts.

Gibbs had accomplished what he'd intended; he'd seen that Dr. Donald Mallard was not missing like the UNCLE agent and that the man was truly sick with the flu _du jour_. With all the good intentions in the world—and a little national security beside—he'd upset the household calm that Mrs. Mallard needed to keep what few wits she had left around her. Upset medical examiner, upset widow, upset pack of dogs—what would he do for an encore?

Escape seemed like a good option. Gibbs allowed Ducky to escort him and the other three to the front veranda. Tyson jumped down from his comfortable perch on Mrs. Mallard's lap to follow behind, ready to chase the intruders out if offered the chance.

"I shall return to work tomorrow, Jethro," Ducky told him, glaring at the dog with a warning in his eye. "I'm certain things will be much better at that point."

"Are you sure?" Gibbs wasn't. "I can have someone come over to watch your mother, so that you can get some rest, Ducky."

"That won't be necessary, Jethro," Ducky returned. "She'll settle down before long." He gave a short laugh. "She hasn't the stamina for any prolonged scenes. It shouldn't surprise me to find her sleeping on the sofa when I go back inside." He eyed Gibbs narrowly, correctly divining the thoughts going through the NCIS leader's mind. "And right now, Jethro, you're wondering if I'm actually the missing UNCLE agent, having dastardly done away with Dr. Donald Mallard so that I could take his place. Have faith in your own abilities, Jethro," he chided. "Don't you think you could recognize me through any set of circumstances? Let me put your mind at ease. Let's see, what would I know that the UNCLE agent wouldn't?"

"Ducky…" Gibbs protested. It was a half-hearted protest; Ducky knew him too well, Gibbs decided. Gibbs _did_ want to be certain that this was indeed Ducky standing in front of him in his bathrobe and not the Kuryakin fellow. The pictures of the two men had looked identical. It _looked_ like Ducky, but…

"Ah, ah." Ducky held up a remonstrating finger. "Let us put any lingering doubts to rest. I could speak of the recently departed who even now rests in my morgue, waiting for an in depth discussion with me in regards to his demise, but that would be too easy. Let's bring up a topic that only you and I would have any knowledge of: there's that time of which you and I are both well aware, an episode that involved crossing the English Channel to meet up with a lovely young lady by the name of Bridget—"

"Bridget Montrachet," Gibbs remembered uncomfortably.

"Not at all your type, Jethro, but you were willing to make allowances under the circumstances—"

_Crack!_

Red blossomed across Dr. Mallard's temple. He fell back.

"Sniper!" Gibbs yelled.


	4. Do You Think We May Have a Problem?

Leon Vance, Director of NCIS, entered the hospital waiting room like a distant thunder storm: deep and ominous, but the sound remained far away. The fury was still in check, ready to blow through whenever the man summoned it. Vance was not a man to cross lightly; clearly, someone had. His eyes darted around the room and took in each and every detail, putting them away into a mental file in the event that they should be needed to interrogate the man responsible for Vance's presence here in this hospital.

That someone was not Special Agent Leroy Gibbs. The NCIS team leader was just as angry, and just as smoldering as his superior, and with twice as much cause. Donald Mallard was part of Gibbs's team. He was a part that wasn't supposed to get in the way of bullets. Bullets were supposed to arrive in Dr. Mallard's morgue in the company of whatever corpse had been found, to be extracted from the various organs and forwarded to the Forensics laboratory.

Gibbs owned the waiting room. There had been no chair positioned where he wanted it—that changed. He had placed the piece of molded plastic where he could stare at the unmoving door to the Intensive Care Unit and put his butt onto it, not intending to move until an answer emerged from behind that door. It wasn't comfortable to sit on, but that wasn't the point. Gibbs welcomed the discomfort.

Vance took a moment to study his agent. Tension stiffened every tendon, every nerve in Gibbs, yet the casual onlooker would never had recognized it. Vance was not a casual onlooker; he respected Gibbs like a campfire—useful to cook a meal but just as likely to blaze out of control if not properly handled.

Vance spoke first. "They say anything?"

"Not yet."

"Who did it?"

"My team's processing the scene."

Vance accepted that. He placed himself on the more comfortable upholstered bench, avoiding the dark stain of doubtful derivation on one cushion, and leaned his back against the wall.

The moments stretched out, and Gibbs was the next one to speak. "You hear from Solo?"

"No."

They settled in to wait for as long as it took.

* * *

"You think this is connected to the UNCLE agent that met with Gibbs and Director Vance," Ziva stated, squatting down to examine the ground beneath the bushes. It was where the bullets had been fired from, and she and DiNozzo were searching for casings. The bushes were azaleas with the flowers past their prime, but a wild vine of indiscriminate origin had taken over, populating the surface with fragrant pink flowers. The effect was pretty, and Ziva suspected that the owners of the property—Ducky's neighbors—had allowed the vine to continue to grow for just that reason. It certainly wasn't for the health of the azaleas.

DiNozzo sneezed. "Don't you?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Ducky has put many criminals behind bars. We should check to see if any of them were recently released. Or it could be related to Seaman Berbeau," she added thoughtfully. "Ducky said that there were puzzling aspects to the gunshot wound."

DiNozzo coughed. "Not buying it, Ziva. We'd just bring in another M.E. to do the autopsy."

"But none with Ducky's expertise." Ziva wasn't yet ready to give up.

DiNozzo shrugged. "Okay. You win. Somebody was out to get Ducky."

"That is not what I said," Ziva objected. "I am merely pointing out that we should not jump to the tail of the dog—ah!" she broke off, and pounced. "The bullet casing! Tony, get some pictures before I bag this for Abby."

DiNozzo peered at the casing through the lens of the camera. "There's something odd about that thing." He snapped a quick few pictures, hurrying before Ziva moved in to pick it up with latex-covered fingers.

"Now you're an expert on shell casings," Ziva sniffed. "Of course it looks odd, Tony. It's dented, which most likely occurred when it was ejected from the firing chamber." She held it up in the air, testing the scent. "No sulfur. I wonder what they used in their gunpowder."

"I told you it was odd," DiNozzo pushed back. "How many powders do you know that don't contain sulfur? And I'm not talking talcum powder. Or baby powder. Although, knowing you, you probably used gunpowder as baby powder growing up."

"Hah, hah." Ziva dropped the casing into the bag and sealed it, staring at the outline. She held it up to the light. "Hm. Perhaps you are right, Tony. The outline of the casing is peculiar."

"Got a footprint right here." DiNozzo snapped more pictures, laying down a measuring tape beside it. "Size ten, men's. Great. That leaves us with at least half a million suspects in the D.C. area alone."

Ziva glanced over at the print that DiNozzo had found. "We should ask what size shoe the UNCLE agent wears."

"Which one? Solo, or the one that looks like Ducky?"

"Either one, or both. They are both of a height to suggest a size ten shoe. And they are both involved in this case."

"You have a suspicious mind. You know that, David?"

"It has kept me alive for many years, Tony. I prefer to remain suspicious." She looked over at the Mallard mansion. "I wonder how McGee is faring."

* * *

Movement, for Special Agent Timothy McGee, was out of the question. It might disturb the inhabitants of this domicile, and that would be bad. Very bad.

As the junior-most agent on the team, DiNozzo had assigned the task of staying with Mrs. Mallard to McGee until long term arrangements could be made. That task was made all the more onerous by the presence of the four Welsh Corgis, but McGee's objections had been overruled by both reality and Senior NCIS Agent DiNozzo. Somebody had to do it, and it wasn't going to be either Senior NCIS agent DiNozzo or Mossad Officer Ziva David.

That left McGee.

Mrs. Mallard had tottered over to him as soon as the other two had exited through the front door. "At last! They're gone!" she hissed at him. "We're safe!"

"Yes, ma'am," McGee responded, thinking that the concept of 'safe' and 'Welsh corgis' didn't really go together under the circumstances. _I thought Welsh Corgis were supposed to be great dogs. Couldn't prove it by this pack._ Perhaps he could get a couple of the clerical help parading as military recruits to help out? McGee grimaced, banishing the thought. If he couldn't trust the youngsters to handle simple data entry, could he put Ducky's mother in their care? Not if he wanted to remain in Gibbs's—and Abby's—good graces.

Mrs. Mallard then stared at him. "You're not my Donald. You're tall!"

"No, ma'am," McGee agreed nervously, wondering if it was the right thing to say. "I work with him. Your son, I mean. And Gibbs. Special Agent Gibbs." McGee wasn't above a little name-dropping, and Gibbs's name had done wonders in the past. He was willing to try anything at this point.

"That's quite all right, young man," Mrs. Mallard decided. "You're rather good-looking, aren't you?"

_Uh-oh!_ Was Ducky's mother coming on to him?

"Come here and sit beside me, young man," she cooed, taking hold of his arm with a surprisingly firm grip.

Yes, that was it. Mrs. Mallard was being charming. McGee didn't know which was more scary: angry Mrs. Mallard or charming Mrs. Mallard. McGee, not having a better option, allowed her to pull him toward the sofa. He steadied her when she sagged and almost went down with buckling knees.

"Thank you, dear boy," she murmured, sinking onto the sofa and dragging him onto the cushions beside her. "Tyson! Contessa! Come to Mother, my lovelies," she clucked, patting the sofa.

Contessa, thus encouraged, hopped up beside the woman and laid her head—with lots of sharp teeth—onto Mrs. Mallard's lap, looking soulfully up at McGee. _Lies_, thought McGee. _You'd just as soon bite me_. Two more whose names McGee couldn't remember clambered up beside them and snuggled in. One placed its head in McGee's own lap. On his trousers. Next to his—ahem!

Movement was out of the question. Tyson, the one with the reputation for biting, lay down on top of McGee's shoes, effectively immobilizing both feet.

Mrs. Mallard nestled her head against McGee's shoulder, closing her eyes. "Nice boy. Not like that nasty man who was here." _Which nasty man? Not Gibbs—you like him. Tony, maybe?_ She delayed a moment longer to look up at McGee, and in that instant—when a substantial portion of sense was back—McGee knew just what kind of breeding Dr. Donald Mallard had in his lineage. In her day, Mrs. Mallard would have made an undercover operative to make Gibbs proud. For all he knew, perhaps she had been. This was the sort of Englishwoman who had made the Empire strong.

Large hazel eyes gazed up at him. "Donald was to have the emerald in my broach reset. You'll see to it, won't you, young man?" She closed her eyes tiredly, and a long and sonorous snore leaked out of her mouth as her jaw drooped in sleep.

Movement, for McGee, was now out of the question. Disturbing Mrs. Mallard's sleep was unthinkable. Pushing the corgis into action would be worse.

What was he supposed to do now?

* * *

"Whoa."

DiNozzo looked up at the lab rat. She was on roller blades today, making her taller than usual, just slightly taller than the senior NCIS agent. DiNozzo was visiting her in her lab, hoping for something—_anything_—that would lead him toward a useful direction. "Whoa?" he repeated. "What, whoa?"

"Whoa, what?" Distracted.

"Abby!"

"This is _way_ cool," she elaborated.

It may have been an elaboration, but it was no help to DiNozzo, and neither was her next statement. Abby glared at the man. "Why are you working the Warehouse 19 case when the guy who shot Ducky is still out there, Tony?"

Now DiNozzo frowned. "What are you talking about, Abby?"

"This bullet casing." Abby indicated the dented and used casing that DiNozzo had handed to her, and kept on glaring. "You found this at the warehouse, right? When you should have been tracking down the guy who shot Ducky."

DiNozzo shook his head. "Abby, that casing came from the bushes across the street from Ducky's place, where the sniper was. He left it behind. Why did you think that it came from Warehouse 19?"

"'Cause it looks a lot like the bullet that got Seaman Berbeau, at least to the naked eye. Let's check it out." Abby slipped the new casing onto the microscopic platform and instructed the lenses to move in for a closer look. As an added attraction, she split the computer screen over the desk in two, bringing up a second shot of the casing.

"Abby—"

"That's not two versions of your casing, Tony." Abby correctly read his mind. She fiddled with the controls to the computer, instructing the screens to converge on top of each other. DiNozzo watched as the two casings aligned themselves into a single image. "The shot on the left is the one you just brought me. The one on the right is the one that you found in the sniper's nest overlooking Warehouse 19. When we cross them, we find that there's a ninety six point three correlation. Which means—"

"That they came from the same gun, and that the two cases are connected," DiNozzo finished for her. He sighed. "Gibbs is not going to be happy."

"Forget Gibbs," Abby told him. "_McGee_ isn't going to be happy with Gibbs breathing down his neck, trying to figure out what was taken from Warehouse 19. McGee is going to have to get those clerical workers to work harder, and that's not going to be easy."

"Abby?"

"Yes, Tony?"

"Who would you rather have unhappy? McGee, or Gibbs?"

"Oh." Abby gave a weak smile. "Tell McGee I said 'good luck'."

* * *

In a very odd way, he looked very Ducky-like. Gibbs was well-accustomed to seeing the medical examiner in full morgue regalia, hair covered by a pale blue disposable cap and torso wrapped a similar color—when it wasn't spattered with blood and guts from the recently deceased.

If he hadn't known better, he would have expected Dr. Mallard to rise from his hospital bed, cock an eyebrow at the NCIS team leader, and say, "of course, Jethro. The angle of entry clearly demonstrates the positioning of the sniper. Why, I remember a similar situation back several years ago. I was performing an autopsy on behalf of Her Majesty's Navy…" whereupon Gibbs would gently interrupt a tale that could meander on for hours before Ducky would get to his point.

It was disconcerting. Gibbs didn't expect the man lying motionless in the bed to look like his friend and colleague. Ducky was always up and puttering around, peering up at the taller man with either wisdom or concern. This person shouldn't look like Ducky, even though he did. The hospital gown was extraordinarily similar to the protective coverings that Ducky wore while conducting an autopsy. The pale bandages that encircled the top of his head, covering the graying blond hair, looked entirely too much like the disposable cap that Ducky routinely wore at work, and that was just plain _wrong_.

Time. That was what that kid doctor had told him: time. Time would pass before Ducky would wake up. Time would pass before the concussion from the bullet glancing off the man's skull would resolve. Gibbs growled under his breath. Time would pass before that kid doctor, the one talking to him and wondering at the same time if he needed to shave this week or not, was more than a third of the medical examiner's years in age. _Turning 'em out young these days, Ducky. This kid any good? He'd better be. He's taking care of you._

_What the hell am I doing here? I ought to be out there, catching the bastard who did this to you._

Not a muscle moved. Gibbs didn't even lean back in the chair.

_Why the hell did this happen?_

A shadow fell across the bed, and now Gibbs did look up.

It was Napoleon Solo, frowning. Gibbs sympathized; he didn't feel much like smiling, either.

Solo nodded slowly, his eyes searching the face before him. "Remarkable," he said. "Illya told me that your Dr. Mallard bore an amazing resemblance, but to see it in person…Are you certain that this is Dr. Mallard?"

"Yeah." Gibbs kept it short, thinking about his last conversation with Ducky. Right before the man got shot, it was. Ducky, knowing that Gibbs would be asking the very same questions as Solo was right now, had brought up the name of someone that the pair had met a very long time ago. "This is Ducky." Gibbs stared at the man. "You have any idea who did this?"

"The exact name? No. Likely some soldier in the shadowy army of evil," Solo returned. "He will almost certainly be rewarded for his efforts with a promotion, if his task was to accomplish this." He indicated the unconscious man in the bed. "What I fear, Agent Gibbs, is that the goal was not to produce unconsciousness but death. In which case your Dr. Mallard is still in danger, likely until my colleague surfaces. I appreciate your posting guards; do they know what they're up against?"

"No, and neither do I." Now Gibbs did sit back in the chair, suppressing the urge to fold his arms in annoyance.

Solo acknowledged the reproof by taking his own seat. He too, Gibbs noted, placed his chair where he could simultaneously scan the entrance to the room and windows leading to the open air outside the second floor of the hospital. _Just another indication of how good a spook this Solo was: always watching._

Solo cocked his head, crossing his legs, giving the impression of a man entirely at ease in his surroundings. Gibbs knew the pose for the lie that it was. Solo gestured toward the door to the hallway. "Have you ever heard of THRUSH?" he asked.

Gibbs grunted. "I'll assume that you're not talking about a little song bird."

Solo gave the comment a small smile. "No, I'm not. THRUSH: The Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity," he quoted. "That's more of an assumption than fact: no one has ever determined that acronymic expansion for certain. The question had almost gone away; UNCLE did a rather fine job of dismantling the group many years ago and we were starting to wonder if we'd destroyed them altogether. As you can see, we have not." He gestured toward Ducky, still unmoving.

"How can you tell?"

Solo ticked off the points on his fingers. "One: Illya Kuryakin, my own partner, is missing. Two: your medical examiner, a dead ringer for Illya, was shot before he could say anything."

"You still haven't told me anything to implicate this THRUSH gang."

Solo wasn't finished. "Three: something was stolen from Warehouse 19."

That made Gibbs take notice. "How do you know about Warehouse 19?" he asked. "We haven't yet generated any reports about the place. The only item released even to the brass was that Seaman Berbeau—"

"—was murdered. Yes, I'm aware of that," Solo interrupted. "Agent Gibbs, it's UNCLE's practice to keep an eye on the place—"

"Why?"

Solo remained unruffled. "Let's just say that there are a number of items in that storage facility that would best remain forgotten."

"Clearly someone hasn't forgotten," Gibbs reminded him. "You think it's someone from this THRUSH?"

"THRUSH, or someone with access to their files," Solo agreed.

"What were they after?"

"That, Agent Gibbs, is the sixty four thousand dollar question," Solo mused. He indicated the unconscious man in the bed. "I was hoping that your Dr. Mallard could tell us."

"You think they met?"

"If they had, it was only recently or possibly a brief interaction decades ago. Illya was well aware of the resemblance but made it a point to avoid coming to the D.C. area in order to preserve the distinction between them. In my line of business, Agent Gibbs, one never gives up an advantage until forced and Illya Kuryakin is still one of the best UNCLE operatives the world has ever known. Illya would have studied Dr. Mallard's mannerisms, would have acquired a smattering of knowledge of autopsies so that he could carry off a deception for a short period of time, but any long term cover would have been out of the question. You knew your Dr. Mallard too well, and Illya was quite aware of that."

"So why did you think that Ducky could tell you what was going on?"

"It was more of a hope than an expectation," Solo admitted. "Illya missed his weekly check-in that's required of all retired field agents—"

Gibbs's cell buzzed at him, and Gibbs held up his hand to interrupt the UNCLE agent. "Gibbs."

"Boss? Abby ran the casing that Ducky's sniper left behind. Boss, you're not going to believe this, but it's identical to the one—"

"—that you found at Warehouse 19. Yeah, I know, DiNozzo," Gibbs cut him off. He came to a decision. "We need to find out what they took. Tell McGee to get a move on."

"Uh, Boss? Right now he's watching—"

"I know what he's doing, DiNozzo, and I want him to do something else. Make it happen."

"Right, Boss." DiNozzo hung up before Gibbs could make any more demands.

Gibbs spared a look of exasperation for the cell before shoving it back into his pocket. He turned back to Solo. "You were saying?"

_Snick!_

It didn't take much to identify the sound, and the tinkling of shattered glass from the window was another big hint. The pillow underneath Ducky's head huffed as a small and deadly projectile missed its intended target and arrowed its way through the white linen pillowcase.

_Sniper!_

Just the preliminaries. Four black cat-suited men barreled in through the door, guns in hands, shouting.

_What the hell?_ Gibbs boiled into action. Shove the bed aside so that his man was out of the line of fire from the window. Knock the oncoming assailant's arm askew so that the bullet from the assailant's handgun missed by a country mile, instead putting a hole through the bag of intravenous fluids hanging from the ceiling. Liquid squirted out, dripping onto Ducky's bed.

Retired didn't mean incompetent—Gibbs was treated to the sight of Napoleon Solo digging stiffened fingers into the sweet spot of another of the gunman, and the man going down in obvious agony. One down, three to go.

This was not fun. Gibbs grabbed the arm of the next one. He didn't have time to be gentle, not with handguns waving in his face. He yanked, and neatly dislocated the arm from its socket. If the arm didn't work, neither would the hand holding the gun. Two down.

Stomp onto a deserving instep, kick the shin. It was remarkable how much pain could be inflicted with a heavy boot, and Gibbs used that fact to disable the next assailant, the one who had wreaked devastation on an innocent bag of intravenous fluids. Turning to look for the last attacker, Gibbs discovered that Mr. Solo had arrived ahead of him, putting the final touches onto a submission hold to render the attacker unconscious.

Solo lowered the man to the floor. He lifted one eyebrow at Gibbs. "Do you think we may have a problem, Agent Gibbs?"


	5. Obfuscation can be an Art Form

"Are you quite certain that the nasty man won't find us here, Mr. Magoo?" Mrs. Mallard inquired.

"Yes, Mrs. Mallard, I am," McGee returned, trying to sound earnest. "He won't find us." _Nobody will be able to find anything or anyone in this dusty warehouse, and that includes whatever it is that Gibbs wants me to find_. _In fact, if we stay here much longer, they may never be able to find you and I until we're dessicated corpses in the dust_. "You stay close to me."

This was all DiNozzo's fault. DiNozzo _knew_ that McGee was looking after Mrs. Mallard, _knew_ that he had the little clerical kittens back at NCIS headquarters trying to input all the data that he needed to figure out what Gibbs was looking for in Warehouse 19. Why hadn't DiNozzo listened when McGee tried to explain all that?

But _noooo_. All DiNozzo had said was, 'Ziva and I are running down the identities of the suspects that tried to take Ducky out at the hospital. Get over to Warehouse 19 and do some looking around.' McGee had objected, telling Tony that he hadn't yet been relieved of his responsibility to Ducky's mother—which he was really looking forward to because Tyson was getting hungry—and all DiNozzo had said was, 'take her with you, Probie. Think of it as an outing for her. Cheap entertainment.'

It wasn't entertaining. It was hectic. It was hard work. Whoever would have thought that a woman of Mrs. Mallard's advanced years could totter so quickly up and down the aisles, looking for who knew what?

Would it help if he tied her up? For a few minutes, maybe, but he'd be in for it when Ducky woke up and found out what he'd done. McGee would be lucky not to end up on Ducky's table for a very personal tour of medical examiner's tools.

"Mrs. Mallard, please sit down," he begged, trying to direct her to the chair in front of the dust-laden desk.

"Certainly, Mr. Maggot," she replied, tottering over to the wall containing the hundreds of drawers of index cards, cards that hadn't yet been retrieved by McGee's clerical help. She pulled out one of the drawers at random. It slid out of the rack and toppled over, spilling some thousand or more cards onto the dusty floor. "Goodness! Where did all those papers come from?" She looked around. "Where are the puppies? Tyson? Contessa? Come to Mother. Yoo hoo…"

Those were the same cards that McGee's clerical help back at Headquarters were inputting into the program that he'd designed for the task. The first third of the cards were at Headquarters, and McGee, in the interests of space and organization, had elected to do the job in thirds. That meant that two-thirds of the cards remained here in the card catalog, waiting for McGee and his crew to get around to them.

McGee had another idea, one that would shave off hours and possibly days of time from his search. Objective: determine what it was that Berbeau's killers were after, and if they'd gotten it. Right now Gibbs was of the opinion that the killers hadn't found it, because if they had, they wouldn't be taking pot shots at Ducky.

McGee was going to proceed on the premise—a prayer, really—that whoever had put this warehouse together used at least a modicum of organizational skills. If McGee could figure out which of the various letters and numbers belonged to the items surrounding the area where the footsteps had gone to, perhaps he could figure out what coding went with what they were looking for. That would narrow down the number of cards to input into his program and possibly aim them toward the target.

At least, that was the goal. 134H had been where the original footsteps had stopped and there was a box missing from that spot, so they had assumed that whatever the killers were after, it was 134H.

The problem was, McGee and his crew hadn't yet come across a card for 134H and had no clue what 134H referred to.

"Mrs. Mallard!" Dammit, where had she gotten to? The woman could move faster than Tony DiNozzo after an unattached and unmarried skirt. McGee caught sight of a tiny figure disappearing around the corner of a stack of boxes, and took off after her.

"Look what I've discovered, Mr. Milktoast," Mrs. Mallard said, holding up a deck of playing cards that she'd picked up off of the shelf next to her. "Would you care to join me in a round of whist?"

"That sounds delightful, Mrs. Mallard," McGee lied. "Here, come back to the desk so that we have a surface to play on." He led her back toward the front of the warehouse. Maybe he could interest her in solitaire, so that he could do his own work?

It hit him: tying the woman up would leave marks but no one would ever notice if he used his handcuffs to attach her ankle to the heavy desk. Not only that, but the woman already had a number of bruises on her shins. Ducky had mentioned that his mother had begun to fall occasionally. Any additional marks would be attributed to the lady's advancing age and frailty. That would give McGee the time that he needed to look around.

Worked like a charm: McGee bent over and quietly snicked the cuffs around Mrs. Mallard's ankle and she never noticed. The playing cards went out in a pattern that McGee had never seen, but that didn't matter. What did matter was that the old woman was occupied and content, and so would Gibbs be content if McGee could figure out what the target item was.

McGee took a different tack than had Gibbs and Ziva when they'd first been summoned to the scene of the crime. Gibbs and Ziva had followed the footprints of the perpetrators to find a missing slot labeled 134H and there they had stopped. McGee himself had been stopped by the overwhelming volume of cards in the catalog, and the incomprehensible explanations on those cards as to the contents of each box.

There had to be a better way. There had to be some sort of rhyme and reason to how this warehouse had been set up, and if there was a pattern, then Special Agent Timothy McGee would find it.

He advanced to the spot where the empty slot of 134H was and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that the slot for 134H was relatively small in comparison to its companions. McGee did a rough estimate in his head: no bigger than a bread box, not that anyone used bread boxes any more. A good-sized laptop wouldn't fit inside if he added in the packing material, though some of the smaller netbooks and tablets might. Not a good possibility, he told himself. These were old items that were stored here, not new technology. No, this slot wouldn't hold anything larger than the old telescope that his father had gotten for him. It had been his eighth birthday, McGee remembered, and he'd loved that thing. Young Timothy hadn't been allowed to stay up on school nights to scan the stars, but Friday and Saturday nights was when he and his father would set the thing up on its tripod to gaze at the planets that were hovering above.

McGee hauled his thoughts back to the problem at hand. Space: some twelve inches by twelve inches by probably twenty four inches deep.

Useful, but Gibbs and Ziva had already done that measuring. McGee needed to take another angle—there. Why was the next box over labeled 245J? What was inside? And the box to the other side was 023Z?

However the labeling system went, the alpha-numeric lettering didn't apply to location. But…McGee hoofed it to the end of the row. Yes, there it was: the sign clearly indicated that this row contained items that lived in row H. Okay, if this was row H, why were there boxes from J and Z present?

This was not getting him anywhere. McGee tried a different approach. He slipped box 023Z out of its slot. This one was even smaller than the opening for 134H showed 134H's box to be, barely large enough to hold the vial of green liquid that was nestled within.

Hah! This one came with an explanation card. McGee snatched up the slip of paper that was slipped along one side of the box and unfolded the yellowed and aged sheet.

There was only a short phrase: Drink Me.

Right. Like Timothy McGee was going to drink something that had been sitting in this warehouse for years and possibly decades, that was of unknown origin, and was likely to kill him just for sniffing at it.

Someone tapped at his elbow, and McGee nearly jumped three feet in the air before he realized that it was Mrs. Mallard.

"Mrs. Mallard, you surprised me," he gasped, turning the initial cursing into something more civil in the lady's presence. Then he frowned. "Mrs. Mallard, how did you get here?" _I left you cuffed to the desk_.

Mrs. Mallard held up the handcuffs. Both bracelets hung open, the metal glinting in the meager overhead light. "Mr. Waverly," she scolded, "how many times have I told you not to leave your toys lying around about the house? What if Donald were to find them? You're a very bad influence on him, Mr. Waverly."

"Yes, but…" The cuffs were suddenly in McGee's hand. "How did…?"

"Perfume? For me? Alexander, you shouldn't have!" Mrs. Mallard pounced on the vial in the open box from 023Z.

McGee snatched it away. "Uh, Mrs. Mallard, this isn't for you."

"Nasty boy!" Mrs. Mallard looked around for something with which to strike McGee. Failing that, she shoved him. "Get away from me, nasty boy! Where is my Donald?" She tottered off, presumably in search of Ducky as a lad.

"Mrs. Mallard! Wait, Mrs. Mallard, please don't go!" McGee shoved 023Z back into its slot and hustled after her. That would be just great if he lost her in this maze. How had she gotten out of his cuffs? "Mrs. Mallard, wait!"

He caught up with her as she was trying to get out through the front door and out onto the vast Naval base. The simple doorknob was eluding her best efforts to conquer it. _Figures. She can manage a pair of handcuffs but not a doorknob._ McGee caught up with her. "Mrs. Mallard—"

"Alexander!" Mrs. Mallard turned a face of brilliance and pleasure up to his. "Alexander, what a pleasant surprise! Have you come to take me home?"

"Yes." McGee's shoulders slumped. _I'm whipped. She's beaten me. I can't take this anymore. I can't search this warehouse and watch her at the same time. I'd rather face the Welsh Corgis—even Gibbs_.

It was only as McGee escorted Mrs. Mallard up and into her home that he discovered that she'd snatched the vial of green liquid, the same vial that had been safe in Warehouse 19 for so long. "Mrs. Mallard, give me that. I have to put it back."

Mrs. Mallard glared at him. "Mine!"

"Mrs. Mallard—"

One of the dogs nudged at Ducky's mother. She turned to pet the dog—and dropped the vial.

The Welsh Corgi nosed it, McGee darting his hand forward to snatch it up in horror. The dog lifted its lip in a snarl, and McGee drew back. _Please don't make me shoot you! Please don't make me shoot you to get the vial back!_

Fortunately for both the dog and McGee, the Welsh Corgi only licked the vial, found the thing to be singularly untasty, and drew back to lead the way into the recesses of the Mallard mansion, Mrs. Mallard following like a puppy.

McGee grabbed the vial and hastily stashed it in his pocket. _Out of sight, out of mind,_ and Mrs. Mallard didn't realize that she'd been relieved of her newest acquisition.

Now to get someone else out here to stay with Mrs. Mallard…

* * *

This was suspect number two, and DiNozzo had a strong suspicion that this one would be a lot more helpful than number one had been.

Not that the man would want to be. This one was clearly the one in charge, the one with the most information to give and with the most to lose by sharing it. Of course, he was also the one with the most to gain, gains that might include things like _reduced sentence for cooperation_.

The UNCLE agent, Solo was his name, stood beside him and watched the scene inside the interrogation chamber. DiNozzo wondered just what was going through the man's mind. What had this man seen? What had he lived through? DiNozzo towered over him by several inches but from Gibbs's terse description of the fight in Ducky's hospital room, DiNozzo wasn't about to say that he could take this older agent down if he needed to. Ziva—off seeing to the protection detail for Dr. Mallard—had apparently had education about these UNCLE agents, because she was treating him like a revered elder statesman, well-respected in the field. _Hell, as a retired UNCLE agent, he __is__ well-respected in this field_. DiNozzo reluctantly admired the easy carriage, the elegant lines of the suit that remained unruffled despite the recent fisticuffs. _What tailor does he use, to carry that off?_

Suspect number one had had little to say, just that he and two others had been recruited by the man currently waiting for Gibbs in the interrogation room for some action. The pay would have been good and the work easy: take out an elderly man in a hospital bed. Suspect number one had thought that the whole thing was overkill—why four men for such a simple job?—but his bank account had been in need of a pick-me-up.

Abby had come through with identification for three out of the four in record time. They were all well-known to the local police, and the chief of police had let it be known that having the trio removed from polite society for as long as possible would be a boon. That information had arrived during the interrogation of suspect number one, and the information had helped to cut the interview short.

Suspect number two was different. They could all see that, from the moment that he was escorted into the interrogation room. No, it was actually before that, DiNozzo corrected himself. There had been an inkling of something when they couldn't get any fingerprints off of the man. 'Burned off with a bit of acid' had been Solo's contribution. 'Best be careful with him.'

"He'll be the one we want," Gibbs agreed. "Let's see if I can get a lever from one of the others."

Gibbs had his lever: number two had hired the rest. They would see what else they could pry out of the suspect.

Average height, average weight, but with the same easy gait that suggested that the man had had some above average training somewhere. DiNozzo watched the man lean back in his chair, putting folded hands onto the table.

Gibbs entered the room and sat down. And waited.

Not buying it. The suspect waited just as long.

Gibbs nodded, acknowledging that the opening gambit had failed. "Name?"

"John Smith."

Gibbs sniffed. "'Lee' is actually a more common last name in this country," he informed the suspect. "Care to try again?"

"No."

Gibbs cocked his head. "We've got you dead to rights. Assault on a Federal agent. Conspiracy to commit murder. I'm sure the attorneys will be coming up with a bunch more crimes to charge you with. You'll be going away for a very long time unless you give me reason to recommend leniency."

Silence.

Gibbs tried again. "What's your connection to Warehouse 19?"

Silence. But the man's eyelashes flickered, just once. DiNozzo caught it, and knew by the stiffening of a set of shoulders that Solo had caught the same thing.

Gibbs pushed. "We're tracking down what you took. 134H mean anything to you?"

Yup, make that a definite flinch. DiNozzo took a moment to admire Gibbs's technique. The suspect began to grind his teeth.

Solo, however was getting increasingly agitated. "Stop him!" he demanded, heading for the door to the interrogation room.

"Mr. Solo?" DiNozzo dashed after him, keeping the door from slamming into his face.

Gibbs turned at the unexpected entrance, not happy at the interruption. "What the—"

"Stop him!" Solo insisted. "He's—"

Too late. White froth bubbled from suspect number two's lips. The acrid scent of almonds seeped into the room, and the man slumped to the floor. A single breath exhaled, collapsing the lungs.

Dead. Dead while in NCIS custody. This was not going to look good on the final report.

Solo knelt to examine the body. "Poison tooth," Solo identified it. "I should have known, should have warned you. Cyanide, most likely. I should have stopped this sooner." He tightened his lips. "A favorite technique for THRUSH agents." He looked up at the two NCIS agents. "This proves it, gentlemen. THRUSH is back, and they mean business." He stood back up and pulled his cell phone out of his breast pocket, flipping the electronic toy open. Solo pushed a single button and spoke into the tiny microphone. "Open Channel D."

Then he caught sight of DiNozzo's upraised eyebrows. "What, you thought I would use the old pen communicator? People use cell phones every day, Agent DiNozzo. This is much better camouflaged."

* * *

No windows. That had been the first item that Ziva had insisted upon for her latest charge.

Ziva had been an expert assassin, had trained in the very best of techniques for eliminating the opposition under any and all circumstances, and knew what to look for. THRUSH had tried twice to kill Ducky, and only luck had saved the medical examiner. He had been lucky that the bullet had only grazed his skull, and lucky that both Gibbs and Solo were present when the THRUSH assault team attacked—and lucky that both Gibbs and Solo were as skilled at fighting as they were.

There would be a third time; of that, Ziva was certain. She would not, however, rely upon luck to save her friend. Skill would be a much more sensible ally, and she put all of her skill to the task.

No windows. Restrict the personnel to those that could be vouched for. She relied on Gibbs for that part of the operation; her team leader knew several medical people, and Ziva drew upon those to provide for the medical needs of her charge. Fortunately, at this point in his medical condition Ducky's needs were few: the man would wake up within a day or two with a headache to rival the size of the Washington Memorial, or the surgeons would be wheeling him into surgery. Either way, Ducky was far safer here in this old and unused wing of the hospital than he was in the newer, brighter, and more open to air rooms where any sniper with a single eye could take aim. A large green oxygen tank sat in the corner, delivering oxygen via a long plastic tube and a tall metal pole supported another bag of intravenous fluids. Beyond that, an older nurse well known to Gibbs took her ease in a chair, watching the overhead heart monitor and watching Dr. Mallard breathe.

Ziva prowled around the room, poking her head outside to make certain that the two guards—also known to both Gibbs and herself as reliable—were still at their posts. Both had gas masks dangling from their belts, as a precaution. Ziva herself had questioned the UNCLE agent—_what a joy! The man was brilliant! So many missions, so many successes! What a report Ziva could give to her friends back home—a real UNCLE agent!_—and discovered that the use of anesthetic gasses was a favored technique when THRUSH desired to assassinate or kidnap someone. Ziva prepared her team for that eventuality.

Ziva smiled as she recalled Abby's meeting with Mr. Solo. The UNCLE agent had been suave in a way that Anthony DiNozzo could only aspire to. In a lesser man it would have come off as smarmy, but Mr. Solo made it look good.

"Ah, yes," he had said, taking the bullet casing still wrapped in its plastic bag from Abby. "The SO49-D, we called it. THRUSH called it the SO49."

"Why did you add the 'D'?" Abby wanted to know.

Solo aimed a small smile in her direction. "Because, Ms. Sciutto, the 'D' stood for 'dunce.' It didn't work. A bit of forensics humor." The smile went a bit crooked. "At least, it didn't work back in 1965. It appears that THRUSH has done a bit of upgrading in the last fifty years." He cocked his head. "Do you think that you might be able to reconstruct what they've done to make it work?"

Abby considered. "Maybe. Probably. But only if you get me the original for comparison," she warned.

Solo's smile had gone a bit crooked at that. "That might be a bit of a challenge. I take it you've seen Warehouse 19?"

Ziva had. "The original is stored in there?"

"Yes, Ms. David, it is." Solo shrugged. "The intention was for it to be lost forever."

Abby's own smile had dimmed, Ziva recalled. Tony DiNozzo's, however had brightened at the thought of dumping yet another task onto McGee's plate. What was it with Tony and his sophomoric sense of humor? Needling McGee was one of DiNozzo's favorite pastimes, and Ziva couldn't understand it.

Never mind. Ziva had more important things at the moment, and one of those things was still sleeping in the bed in front of her—

A blue eye stared at her from a pale white face; the other eye was covered by the pristine white bandage despite the dark rim that peeked out from below the socket. There was no recognition in that single eye, and barely any comprehension. The lips moved, but no sound emerged.

"Ducky!" Ziva moved in to take his hand. "Ducky, it's all right. You're safe." If she continued to talk, perhaps he would regain his senses and recognize her.

Ducky couldn't even summon the strength to squeeze her hand. He blinked, licking dry lips. He closed his eyes, clearly exhausted by even that small task.

Ziva would help to remind him of what had occurred. "You were shot by a sniper," she said quietly into his ear. "You are in a hospital, under guard. You are safe."

"Safe." The word barely escaped.

"Safe," Ziva repeated. "I will tell Gibbs that you have awakened."

The eye opened once again to stare at her. "Gibbs."

"That's right," Ziva said, encouraged. "Jethro Gibbs. Your friend," she offered, to help the addled brain collect itself. This occurred frequently with minds that had suffered an injury. Memory could take a while to return. "He will be pleased to hear that you are improving."

The eye shut down once more. "Gibbs…"

Little information, but a satisfying development. Ziva would notify Gibbs.

* * *

McGee leaned back in his chair in the bullpen of NCIS headquarters and pursed his lips. This was not working.

He stabbed the power button to shut down the computer in a harsh and dissatisfying manner: it had crashed for the third time over the program that he'd devised for the deciphering of the catalog system of Warehouse 19. Bambi and the rest of the clerical help had entered almost a third of the little index cards, and that, McGee thought, ought to have been enough for the computer to pull out some sort of correlation. It might take a bit longer to actually have the whole thing make sense, but it should at least have given _some_ indication that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Instead, the computer told him in no uncertain terms that there was _no_ answer to the puzzle that McGee had set, and if McGee insisted on moving forward then the computer would have no choice but to implode. Even Task Manager couldn't handle the distress, hence the _you will lose all of your work_ type shut-down happening.

So McGee leaned back in his chair, staring at the blank computer screen, hoping that his lip wouldn't start to bleed after the way that he'd bitten it. Despite what the computer said, there _had_ to be an answer. There had to be some method as to how the boxes and crates had been placed in Warehouse 19, and McGee would find it because without that information Gibbs would never know just what had been in Box 134H. Without that information, McGee would be on the receiving end of a Gibbs-headwhack like he'd never gotten before.

_Look at this thing logically_. McGee reached for the power button to the desktop computer. Logic meant computers. Add the brain power.

A shadow fell across his desk, and an arch voice inquired, "why?"

McGee looked up: it was Mr. Solo. Then the words penetrated, and McGee frowned. "Why, what?"

Solo perched himself on the edge of McGee's desk, careful not to disturb the piles of index cards dotting the surface. "Why must it make sense?"

"Because…" McGee's voice trailed off as he considered the concept. "But it's a card catalog. It's designed to bring order to chaos."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes—" McGee started to say, and once again couldn't complete his statement. "Wait a minute. Maybe you're right. Who says that the card catalog has to make sense?" He warmed to his topic. "Maybe the whole thing is just a red herring. After all, Warehouse 19 houses things that people seem to want to forget, things that either didn't work or maybe were too dangerous to let loose. Maybe the card catalog was supposed to do what it's done: waste our time and throw us off the track." A broad smile crossed McGee's face as he regarded the senior UNCLE agent. "How did you know?"

A small return smile. "I didn't, Agent McGee." The smile grew a bit broader. "But I've been involved with governments across the globe for several decades as well as several nefarious organizations and individuals bent on world domination, and let me tell you: obfuscation can be an art form." Solo pulled himself back up to a standing position. "The real question is: what are you going to do about it?"


	6. Which One?

_Not a pleasant situation. No, not at all. Why, when I was a lad, I remember undergoing a similarly unpleasant circumstance. It was on the Scottish moors, lost among the bogs well into the night. Quite hungry I was, and tired. I believe I had bumped my head. I remember Mother being rather cross with me, once the search party with their dogs located me under a bit of gorse and heather._

_I don't, however, remember being so uncomfortable, and Mother is not likely to be in any position to lead a rescue party to fetch me this time. Ah, quite the woman she was back then, although the small child that I was could not appreciate her talents._

_Once found, I was given a cuppa, and Mother even placed a wee bit of whiskey into it, to 'put me to rights' as she was wont to say._

_I should quite like a stout cup of tea at the moment. I suppose it's too much to ask for, under the circumstances._

_

* * *

_

The relaxed stride into Abby's lab belied the tension in Gibbs's soul. "Tell me you got something for me, Abby."

"Don't I always, Gibbs? You're here, therefore I have something." Abby turned away from the bank of computer lights that told her volumes and the rest of the world that electricity had been consumed for esoteric purposes. "In this case, I have information about the sniper weapon they used, that SO49-D thing that Mr. Solo talked about. He's right, Gibbs; it's a sniper weapon with the most phenomenal-ist sights on it. You could split a hair on a gnat's ass with it—not that _you_ couldn't already do that, Gibbs, with your sniper stuff, but this is for regular sniper guys who aren't as good as you." Abby backpedaled, diving into the information that she'd found. "Most of the casing shows wear and deterioration like you'd expect from fifty year old stuff: the edges are worn, some of the crimping pulled away. Other stuff looks newer, and I concentrated on that. Titanium, Gibbs. It's a titanium-nickel alloy, and there aren't too many places that you can get this particular stuff from. In fact, there's like only one with this particular molecular make-up. I mean, other places could make it like this if they really really wanted to, but just getting it off the shelf like this, there's only one place and it's in this country—"

Gibbs placed a kiss on top of her head, interrupting the flood of words. "Good work, Abbs."

* * *

"Dead end, boss," DiNozzo reported, hanging up the handset to his phone. "The three living suspects all check out: local talent hired for this job. Long priors, no connection with organized crime or any other links. Our dead guy showed up at the bar one night, made a couple of inquiries, and paid half up front. In cash," he added aggrievedly. "No way to trace it."

Gibbs nodded, accepting the information as confirmation of something he already suspected. "You got any other leads, DiNozzo?"

"Uh…no, boss?"

The only reason that DiNozzo didn't collect a headwhack was that Gibbs was too far away. "I got a dead seaman and Ducky lying in a hospital bed, DiNozzo, and you've got Abby's information. Get to it, DiNozzo!"

"Yes, boss. Tracking down Abby's lead." DiNozzo hurriedly punched in the data into his computer, muttering under his breath. "McGee ought to be doing this."

"McGee isn't here, and neither is Ziva," Gibbs reminded him. He looked around, realizing that DiNozzo was accurate. Gibbs knew where Ziva was; the Mossad officer was supervising the protection detail on the medical examiner. But where was McGee? An answer didn't spring to mind, so he asked the question aloud. "Where _is_ McGee?"

That, DiNozzo had information on. "Warehouse 19, boss. He thinks he can figure it out, find out what it is that we're looking for."

Gibbs grunted. This whole case shouldn't be taking this long, and certainly not because a warehouse of failed experiments was impeding the flow of justice. The warehouse was big, but he could have sent McGee there to re-catalog every damn one of those things and it would have been faster. Come the weekend, if they hadn't made progress, McGee and the rest would find themselves doing just that.

"BK Industries, boss," DiNozzo called out. "That's where the titanium-nickel alloy that Abby identified came from. It's local; it's an address in Maryland, about twenty or so miles outside the Belt." He held up a piece of paper with the address jotted down. "Got it right here, boss."

Gibbs nodded. "You're with me, DiNozzo."

* * *

_Obfuscation can be an art form_.

McGee really liked that little phrase. It put into words exactly what he was feeling, what he had been feeling for as long as he'd been trying to decipher the secrets of Warehouse 19.

He should have recognized it, McGee berated himself. What else could it have been? Why else would anyone use an outdated card catalog made of index cards when computers were so cheap and available? This was the Navy, for heaven sakes! They had computers stuffed into every corner of the base. The card catalog _had_ to be a ploy to keep the curious from realizing what was in the warehouse.

Still, McGee was convinced that there was a method to the madness. There were literally thousands of boxes on the shelves and piled into corridors of crates hidden away from public scrutiny. It went beyond belief to think that there was no method, no system of how those items were placed where they were. Likewise, there had to be some sort of index that would tell a searcher where to look for any particular item. All McGee had to do was to find the proper catalog.

He returned to Warehouse 19 and showed his NCIS shield to the guards on duty at the front, grateful that Gibbs's actions during the initial processing of the scene had resulted in easy access later on. This was where the real clue would be, and McGee was determined to find it. This case had taken on a very personal connection: the same weapon that had killed Seaman Berbeau had been used to nearly do the same to Ducky. No way was NCIS going to let that pass!

There were _two_ guards at the entrance now, evidence of how serious the Navy—in the person of Commander Bellagrigio—was about this warehouse. Before, Warehouse 19 was simply a repository for dust. Now it had taken on a lot more importance. Just what was so important inside remained to be seen, but McGee had no doubt that someone, somewhere, thought that it contained valuable information and technology.

McGee stepped inside, letting the door slide itself shut behind him, letting his senses take in the entire picture.

Warehouse 19 was one of the largest warehouses on the base. It wouldn't quite slide down over the horizon, McGee decided, but it would be a near thing. The area likely covered two to three city blocks. The roof, too, would give a ten story building a run for the money. It was cool inside, protected from the autumn sun that was only allowed to send a few meager spokes of light through filthy windows near the ceiling. The rest of the light was provided by long fluorescent bulbs hanging from the roof. McGee wondered briefly how those bulbs were changed, and recognized the answer right away: they weren't. He estimated that some forty percent of the bulbs had been burned out and were still awaiting replacement.

The boxes and crates simply looked _old_. McGee wasn't talking _so last week_, he was talking _decades_. This place must have been commissioned before the seventies, possibly in the sixties or even earlier, he decided. He stepped up to the first row, the first aisle, and slid his finger along the yellowing label: GH78. _Means nothing to me_, he thought, _and neither does the W1 on the second line of letters and numbers_. That particular box was one of the smaller ones, a mere eighteen inches high and twelve wide. The seal on the box had long since crumbled away to join the rest of the dust on the floor.

_What the hell_, McGee decided. It wasn't as if he didn't have any right to be here. No one had said, _McGee, don't go looking in the rest of the boxes. McGee, don't open Pandora's box. McGee, you'll go blind if you look in the box_.

He pulled the box out of its slot, placing it on the floor in the dust since there was no more convenient place to work. He flipped the lid off of the box.

Very disappointing. It was a gun, and not a particularly enticing sort of gun. It looked like an extraordinarily cheap version of a child's Space Ray Gun where the most interesting part of the whole thing was the capitalized letters on the packaging. There were loops and whorls along the barrel that appeared to have no purpose whatsoever, and three of those loops even had holes where mice had chewed through the plastic. _Mice, chewing through plastic? Must have been very desperate mice. Or very tasty plastic._

McGee pulled the toy out of the box. The grip fit neatly in his hand, and that was the only pleasurable aspect of the whole thing. He sighted down the short barrel, taking pseudo-aim at the far wall. The trigger flopped loosely underneath his finger, and McGee drew back fearfully. Had he accidentally set the thing off—no. Broken, or possibly failed technology from the first, but the thing did nothing. There wasn't a spark of energy or Space Rays or even a couple of Capitalized Letters in it. Worthless.

However, it was the first step in figuring out how to locate things in this warehouse. McGee moved onto the next box.

Fabric. Silvery, shimmering fabric. No, shimmering was too strong a word, McGee decided. Barely glinting in the meager light, and McGee rather thought that even in the bright sunlight outside the best that the stuff could do would be to look dirty and gray. He glanced at the identifying card outside: GH587 and, underneath, C1.

McGee dutifully noted the information onto the notepad of his cell, along with a description of what he'd found. He could be at this all day, he thought dolefully, and not get anywhere.

Enough of the initial aisles. Perhaps comparing the first rows to the last? Couldn't hurt. McGee let his steps amble along, drinking in the sights of the various boxes, trying to get a _feel_ for the place instead of ruthlessly categorizing everything. _How scientific, Agent McGee. Wouldn't your professors at MIT be ashamed?_ Maybe he could stuff this under the concept of fuzzy logic…

No, there was definitely a difference here at the far end of the warehouse, in the corner furthest away from the door. McGee tightened his lips, trying to figure out what it was that he was seeing. There was still room left for additional boxes, some two to three aisles awaiting deposits, but there was clearly a difference in the appearance of the crates that now surrounded McGee. What was it?

_C'mon, McGee_. He could hear DiNozzo's mocking voice in his head. _You're a trained NCIS agent. What are you seeing?_

So much for 'fuzzy logic'. McGee retreated into familiar scientific categorization, trying to methodically determine what it was that set his instincts crawling around like—

Old.

That was the key. The boxes at the front were old, were decades old. These here, at the back were much newer. They still weren't fresh off of the production shelves, but the dust here was only half an inch thick instead of a blizzard's worth of dirt.

Smaller, too. Not by much, but the newer boxes tended to be smaller, coming in _bread box_ size rather than some of the _bulldozer_ sized crates that some of the ones closer to the front demonstrated. McGee moved in to inspect the small labels beneath each box, noting that these labels, unlike the crumbling ones in the front of the warehouse, appeared to have been generated by a printer rather than a typewriter. The ink was neater and more uniform; no laborious punching of each individual keystroke to produce an uneven laying of ink. The labels still made no sense; 857W was next to 954E, although both bore the title of 'W1' beneath the initial designation.

_Obfuscation can be an art form_. The words came back to McGee's mind, and an inkling of the thought weaseled its way forward to his frontal lobes. Maybe, just maybe…Time to test an idea not even so well-formed to qualify as a theory…

McGee slit open the seal on the box of 857W. He couldn't help the jittery feeling of _doing something wrong_ but he wrestled it down by telling himself that he was investigating a case. If he wasn't supposed to be opening these boxes in the pursuit of justice, someone would have said something by now.

857W was similar in size and shape as Box GH78 at the very front of the warehouse. McGee flipped open the lid: inside was another gun. This one looked far more modern than the Space Ray Gun that GH78 had contained. This one almost looked ready to load and shoot.

Maybe not. McGee looked more closely at the gun inside the box. There was a fine sheen of dust over it, and McGee judged that the thing had been stored here in Warehouse 19 for perhaps one to two years. The metal was dark, perhaps with a high percentage of tempered steel in it, and felt heavy to his hand. The barrel looked narrow, but the chamber for the bullets wasn't. Bulky, he decided, and that was odd. Why a large bullet chamber, yet a narrow barrel for the bullets to be propelled through? He almost looked down the barrel before catching himself. _Is it really unloaded, McGee, or did you just avoid blowing the nose off of your face?_ He resolved to ask Abby for help with any more hands-on research as to exactly what this gun was capable of. This was, after all, Warehouse 19 where the unusual got stored—and lost. _Obfuscation can be an art form_.

954E looked much the same. The seal was slit open with much less guilt weighing him down, and he flipped open the box to find yet another handgun. This one, however, managed to come in chartreuse. It felt heavy like steel, it resisted bending like steel, but McGee had yet to come across any metal that gleamed with a sort half yellow and half green glow. The bullet chamber too was odd; it wouldn't open. In fact, it was sealed shut, and McGee determined that whatever this gun was meant to do, firing bullets wasn't among its attributes. _Another one for Abby_.

However, he had his answer, the method behind the madness that was the card catalog system in this mausoleum of weapons and failed experiments. _Obfuscation can be an art form_, Mr. Solo had said, and the UNCLE agent had been correct.

The card catalog system had been a ploy to steer investigators such as himself down blind alleys, looking for answers that weren't there. The reason that his computer froze whenever he tried to find a correlation between the letters and numbers on the cards was because there was no correlation. The letters and numbers on this index cards bore no resemblance to reality, had no meaning and no reason for existence beyond that of obfuscation.

That didn't mean that there was no way of determining exactly what was where in this huge building. McGee had already made one observation and validated it: anything labeled 'W1' had a handgun in it, and he had no doubt that more experimentation would determine the meanings of some of the other secondary index card markings. Most of the crates bore the number '3', and McGee had a sneaking suspicion that the greater the number, the larger the size of the item within.

He'd made another correlation, one more pertinent to the case at hand: the distribution of the boxes was directly related to their arrival at the warehouse. The labels were fake, a decoy, but the boxes arrived and were placed along the shelves in chronological order. That accounted for the almost haphazard stacking on the shelves. There were many empty areas and the smaller boxes could easily have been packed in for a much more efficient use of space, but efficiency hadn't been part of the mindset. The overriding dictate had been to place the items in chronologic order of arrival, and that had mandated the inefficient placement of the boxes and crates.

McGee now had the key. He retraced his steps to where the missing box had been, 134H. That had been the one that the original footsteps had led Gibbs and Ziva to, the box that had been taken by the assassins. The index card relating to 134H, he recalled, had had the indication of 'W2' where he'd been finding 'W1' on the other cards. McGee wasn't about to say what the 'W' stood for, but it was only reasonable to assume that the '2' meant that it was a bit bigger—

No. The dust left behind clearly showed that the box belonging to 134H was no larger than either of the other two that held handguns. Therefore the ones and twos must reference something other than size of the box or the contents within. Lethality? McGee could live with that as a working hypothesis. '1' indicated a weapon that would take out an opponent one at a time. '2' could handle two of the enemy, perhaps even a few more.

McGee glanced uneasily at the crate next to him. The lower part of the label told him that it was an 'M4'.

Time to test his hypothesis. McGee worked at the crate until he could pry open one edge and peer inside. He didn't need to dismantle the whole crate; just enough to get a good look at—

A missile. An honest-to-Murgatroyd, gleaming, streamlined missile.

'M4'. 'M' stood for missile. '4' stood for the amount of damage it could do, and '4' seemed a heck of a lot larger than '1'.

McGee suddenly found himself very grateful that Warehouse 19 housed failed experiments. The world would have been a very different place if some of these things had been engineered more successfully.

So why had someone gone to the trouble of stealing 134H?

* * *

BK Industries was a small factory on the outskirts of nowhere. It wasn't new—DiNozzo's research had shown that the place had been in operation for some twenty years or so, and owned by a front for some entrepreneurial types who were a front for some more entrepreneurial types higher up on the financial food chain. Gibbs resolved to let the ownership issue pass for the moment. He could have DiNozzo track 'em down if he needed to, but what he really needed at the moment was a lead. Abby had determined that the titanium-nickel alloy had come from this factory, so this is where he was looking. This wasn't quite a fishing expedition, but it came close.

'Small factory' hopefully meant fewer people and fewer hoops to jump through to get to who they needed. Gibbs flashed his badge at the guard at the gate, aware of DiNozzo doing the same from the car seat beside him. "NCIS. We're here on business."

The guard's eyebrows hit his hairline, and Gibbs wasn't certain if he liked that reaction. Most innocent types tended to react that way when confronted by the authorities, but Gibbs didn't want _innocent_. He wanted someone to be guilty as sin, so that he could arrest them and put the case to bed, even if it was only a minimum wage guard trying to make it to retirement without losing his life's savings to the economy.

"Uh…" the guard stammered. "Uh, yes, sir. Sir. Uh, who do you want, sir?"

Gibbs hadn't heard so many 'sirs' since he'd been in uniform, and probably not even then. "I need to talk to whoever is in charge of taking in orders and shipping out the goods."

"Uh…yes, sir."

_Enough with the 'sirs'._

"That'd be Mr. Stewart, sir. He's in Sales. Marketing. Shipping."

"Which is it?" DiNozzo asked mildly. "Sales, Marketing, or Shipping?"

Gibbs spared his agent a glance. "Maybe all three, DiNozzo?"

"Yes, sir, that's it," the guard said, relieved that someone could put words into his mouth. "All three. Mr. Stewart. You just go through that gate there, sir. Park in front. In Visitors. The Visitor's parking slots. There are three of them. Visitor's, I mean. Slots. Parking slots."

Gibbs took pity on the guard and drove off toward the main building which was all of fifty yards away. The three visitor parking slots were already taken, so Gibbs pulled the car into the slot meant for someone whose name and title had been washed away by the weather. A 'T' was left, along with a 'hers' at the end of the name, and Gibbs wasn't in any mood to try to decipher the rest. If he needed it figured out, he'd pull Abby out of her lab to get it.

Clearly the guard had called ahead, even in the short time that it took to park the car and walk the short distance across the parking lot to the entrance to BK Industries, for the two were immediately escorted to meet with Mr. Stewart. Gibbs used the opportunity to survey and assess his surroundings: the business was keeping its head above water, enough to provide a cost of living wage increase to its employees but a holiday bonus likely wouldn't happen. He grunted under his breath; these days, just having a job was considered a bonus. The carpets covering the floor beneath his feet were clean but far from new. Likewise, the windows were clean enough to let in the sun's light but the curtains that framed the edges were going to stay faded for a good long time.

In short, this didn't appear to be a place where a Plot to Dominate the World was being hatched by trying to assassinate a medical examiner.

Stanley Stewart also wasn't the type that Gibbs would peg as a sniper. Most snipers he knew weren't overweight by fifty pounds or more, didn't have a bunch of fake posies sitting on the windowsill, and didn't have a photo of two kids on his desk. Stewart did welcome the pair and offer whatever assistance he could, but Gibbs would allow that someone trying to hide something would also mouth the same lines.

"I need a list of everyone that you've sold your titanium-nickel alloy to in the past six months," Gibbs informed the man.

"Not hard," Stewart told them. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and extended it to the NCIS agents. "There you go. What else?"

Gibbs looked at the paper, DiNozzo peering over his shoulder. "Just the one? Ms. Ebony Carruthers, Carney Elementary School, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?"

"That's right, Agent Gibbs," Stewart confirmed. "As it so happens, I've been researching this side of the business, determining its viability, which is why I have the details for you on the spot. As you can tell, this is not our best-selling line. In fact, in another two weeks, you won't be able to get it from us any more. We're phasing it out. I think you can see why," he added dryly.

Gibbs could.

So could DiNozzo. "How about the six months before that?" he suggested, refusing to let desperation touch his voice.

Stewart shrugged. "I can get those names for you, but they're pretty much the same. Ms. Carruthers accounted for some of the purchases, along with a couple of other teachers. I think somebody at IBM ordered a batch, and maybe one or two other companies. Like I said: this is not a big seller."

Gibbs frowned. "Nobody else?"

Stewart echoed the frown. "No. But…" he trailed off, thinking. "You know, there was that missing quantity…"

Two sets of NCIS ears perked up. "Missing?" DiNozzo prodded politely.

Stewart again shrugged. "To be honest, it's more likely an error in inventory. Somebody wrote down the wrong number, and it looked we had more than we did. Whatever the story, it was at least three—no, four months ago. Maybe longer."

"When did you discover it?" Gibbs asked.

Stewart tried to think. "Three months ago, at least. No, not then. It was when Ms. Carruthers placed her last order. Shipping went in to package it up, and came up with the discrepancy. They reported it right away, and we wrote it off as a simple inventory error."

"So it would have been before this teacher ordered the titanium-nickel." Gibbs was satisfied with the timeline. He exchanged glances with DiNozzo. "Enough time to use it to modify a sniper special."

* * *

Ducky was still sleeping. His condition had improved, or so his physicians said, but Ziva David couldn't see any difference.

Well…maybe one difference. There was no longer a nurse stationed in the room, waiting to pounce should the medical examiner fail to continue to breathe. There were still little electrodes taped onto Ducky's chest and a small box with a bouncing green light over his head, and no one appeared to be watching it. They had told Ziva that someone at the nurses' station on another floor was keeping a close eye on a unit showing the same green bouncing light, but Ziva doubted it. There were too many people to be cared for and too few people to do it.

Not for Gibbs. The NCIS team leader couldn't demand that the hospital do as he wished, but his own people he could direct, and did. Ziva remained in the room, occasionally prowling out and about to see if there were signs of a returned foe. Two NCIS guards remained on duty just outside the makeshift hospital room, each one eying a different route in toward the patient. Gibbs couldn't guarantee that Dr. Mallard would have a medical recovery but he could ensure that no snipers would disturb him.

To be honest, there was improvement. The doctors had said so, and Ziva herself had seen Ducky with his eyes open, his gaze blurred and confused—and worried. Concussion, clearly; Ducky's mind was still jolted by the assassin's bullet. The eyes remained open only for short periods, not even minutes, before drifting shut once more but those were hopeful signs that the man was waking up. Gibbs himself had been present during one of those times, and Ducky had responded with a weary "Jethro" before lapsing back into an exhausted sleep.

What had happened? Ziva tried to wrap her mind around the problem and wrestle it into submission. That this had something to do with the missing UNCLE agent, she had no doubt. Ziva David, during her own training, had studied the case files of both Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin—at least, what files the Mossad could acquire. The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement was notoriously stingy with the sharing of procedural technique, preferring instead to wear a cloak of anonymity woven through with superior skills. Ziva was not ashamed to say that the Mossad had adopted and adapted methods derived from the international group. Imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, and all that.

Now she was responsible for the protection of a man thought to be an UNCLE agent by enemy agents. Ziva studied Ducky's face, marveling at how closely the man resembled the pictures of his UNCLE agent counterpart. She wondered if she, too, had a doppelganger. Would she be clever enough to maintain the same distance that Kuryakin had, for just this potential occasion?

Ziva tried to think about the ways that THRUSH might try once again to assassinate the man that they thought was Kuryakin. She had questioned Mr. Solo, relying on his knowledge of the foe to guide her. 'They like to vary their approach', he had told her. 'Sometimes they'll attack in a group, trying to overwhelm you with numbers. At other times they'll use their newest toy, something like an anesthetic gas or a new poison dart.' Solo had rubbed his neck in remembered discomfort at that, perhaps recalling the too many occasions when he himself had been the recipient of a dart containing some dire potion.

It was something of a new concept to Ziva David. In her world, the enemy would be just as likely to kill you. In Solo's world, death would be a blessing, for it meant that a painful interrogation would not follow.

So why was THRUSH after Kuryakin? Solo had said that both he and Kuryakin were retired. Was Solo telling the truth? There was no reason not to believe him, and both agents were of Ducky's era. Ziva herself wondered why Ducky too had not retired, suspecting that the answer lay somewhere in the presence of boredom. Would Ziva herself ever achieve retirement? Would she live that long in her chosen line of work?

Too many questions, and she hadn't even approached the current case. Kuryakin was missing. Ducky had been shot. There was something missing from Warehouse 19. The first two were clearly linked, but what about the third? Solo seemed to think so, and there was no reason to believe—yet—that he was lying to them. Ziva had no doubt that Solo would lie without a qualm if he thought that it would be in his best interests, but she prided herself on her ability to sense when someone was telling the truth, and Solo's words had the ring of honesty. Perhaps he hadn't told everything, though, and Ziva couldn't fault the UNCLE agent for that. _Always hold something back_. That was her motto, and Gibbs's, and everyone else's in this business.

Too, what had been taken from Warehouse 19? McGee was investigating, but it was taking entirely too long. Someone clearly did not want others to know what was stored in the warehouse and had taken pains to conceal the evidence. Ziva smiled to herself. That 'someone' did not know McGee. Her fellow NCIS agent was not her equal when it came to subduing a suspect—very few were, to be honest, and Ziva strove for honesty when it suited her—but the man had a gift for computers and logical thinking and Gibbs was putting both of those attributes to work on the Warehouse 19 question. Ziva believed that McGee would come up with the answer—eventually. Would it be soon enough?

A noise—Ziva went on point. It was a noise out of the ordinary, and both guards just outside the door to Ducky's room likewise came alert.

Hand signals: both guards advanced toward the noise, while Ziva stayed with her charge. It would not be the first time that disaster had occurred because guards had been deliberately decoyed away and Ziva would stay here, waiting, in case the enemy should approach from the other direction. Ziva slid silently to the door, watching the NCIS guards dart from door to door, seeking the perpetrator of the noise, herself scanning down the other direction of the hallway.

Hand slipped around her neck from behind, seeking the one spot that would render instant unconsciousness.

Blackness.


	7. He Could Do Stubborn

_This is becoming more than discomforting. It has achieved the status of 'worrisome'. _

_It reminds of the time when I was trapped in that coffin, about to be relieved of the entire contents of my cardiovascular system by the gentleman with the predilection for taxidermy. Quite lucky I was, that Jethro and the others arrived in a timely fashion._

_Perhaps, Jethro, you might make an effort to come to my side once again? I should appreciate it; of that, you may be certain._

_

* * *

_

McGee folded his arms, trying for a Gibbs-like composure.

Mr. Solo perched on the edge of DiNozzo's desk, regarding the young NCIS agent with a quizzical stare. "You do realize, Agent McGee, that what you're asking is quite impossible."

_What would Gibbs say under these circumstances?_ McGee gave it his best shot. "Actually, Mr. Solo, it's quite possible. You access the proper database, and I'll take it from there. You enter your password, and give me a way in to the information."

Solo shook his head. "Impossible. UNCLE is an international organization, not a national one. You have no authority to access that information."

"But you do," McGee pointed out.

"You could give me the search parameters."

"You could give me access." McGee refused to back down, wondering if he was doing the right thing. Would he collect a head whack from Gibbs when the boss returned to Headquarters for not cooperating with the distinguished guest? Or would McGee receive one of the rare 'good work, McGee' comments that shone more brightly than any medal Director Vance could hand out?

Another thought hit. "You came to us," McGee pointed out with a calm that he had borrowed from Gibbs and would give back as soon as he'd finished with it. "You're the one with the missing agent."

"You have a murder to solve."

"And you may end up with one while we sit here arguing over security. We're only presuming that Agent Kuryakin is still alive." How many more clever lines could McGee devise on the spot? It was so much easier when he was in front of his typewriter. If the witty repartee wasn't witty enough, he could white it out and start over again. Well, if he couldn't figure out a good line to spout, McGee would simply have to rely on being stubborn. He could do stubborn.

Solo seemed to recognize the same thing; that, or he decided that giving in to McGee would be the best way to advance his own cause. "All right," he allowed, the words gracious in defeat. He gestured toward McGee's computer. "If you'll permit me?"

_Not a word. Don't let the triumph leak forth and sully the moment_. McGee rose from his chair, allowing the UNCLE agent to take his place in front of the keyboard.

It didn't take long. Solo tapped in the address into the bar along the top of the computer screen and then added his password. Then another password. Then a third.

McGee was impressed, not with the fact that the database Solo was delving into required three passwords, but that Mr. Solo could remember each and every one without a hitch. On the other hand, he thought to himself, Solo had come down here from New York City knowing that Warehouse 19 was involved—wait a minute. No, Solo hadn't known. No one had known that the two cases—the missing UNCLE agent and the murder of the guard at Warehouse 19—were connected until Abby had identified the bullet casings as coming from the same esoteric weapon. McGee's admiration rose substantially.

No time for that, now. McGee needed to figure out what had been taken from Warehouse 19, and he now had the tools to do just that. He slipped back into place in front of his computer, and Solo leaned over his shoulder to watch.

The database was like no other computer database he had ever worked with before, but that didn't phase McGee. Most databases worked through search patterns, the user able to pull up lists based on key words and phrases that would give the end user the specific data or file that they needed.

Not this one. This was a simple handwritten list of items, some twenty papers scanned into an immutable picture, unalterable without sophisticated software designed to push electrons hither and thither.

That was fine with McGee. He didn't need the sophisticated software. All he needed was the zoom control, to zero in on the contents of the paper.

Solo couldn't wait any longer. "Did you find it?"

"Almost." McGee could estimate where the information was on the paper, scrolling through the file until he'd reached page fifteen. He scanned the contents, not seeing what he was looking for. _Patience, McGee; keep searching. An ever widening search pattern, that was the way to do it._ Not on page sixteen—there it is. Page fourteen.

He found what he was looking for on the top of page fourteen: July 24, 1963. Crate. Missile. Designed to distribute X-neutrinos in a three mile radius circle. Status: fatal error in scale up. X-neutrinos dissipate within two meters of dispersion point.

Solo peered at the entry. "That's not it, McGee. The box to 134H was too small to contain a missile."

"Exactly." McGee grabbed the mouse and scrolled up to page thirteen. "This. This is what was in 134H."

The casual observer would not have realized that the description belonged to the object in box 134H. None of the entries were labeled with the arcane card catalog system that Warehouse 19 was using. There were only dates of entry with a brief description of the item interred in the warehouse, along with a phrase describing each item as inoperative in some fashion.

Solo looked at the inscription that McGee had pointed out, reading it aloud. "January 2, 1963. Box. Laser device, capable of puncturing through zero point eight meters of tempered steel at a distance of fourteen point six kilometers when appropriate lens is inserted. Status: lens missing, inert at present." He looked up. "That's it?"

McGee nodded. "That's it. That's what they took from Warehouse 19."

"Are you sure?" Solo looked at him through narrowed eyes. "How do you know? There's no correlation to the label of 134H."

McGee nodded once more. "There won't be. In fact, there isn't any correlation to the labels whatsoever." He warmed to his topic. "You gave me the hint, Mr. Solo. You said, 'obfuscation can be an art form'. Once I disregarded the labels, I was able to concentrate on other aspects of logic."

"Such as…?"

"Chronology," McGee told him. "When I walked through Warehouse 19, I was struck by the fact that the boxes and crates were simply lined up on the shelves, one alongside of the other. There was no effort to save space, no effort to consolidate room on the shelves. The boxes and crates were…just there. Almost random. Randomly placed, I mean.

"But they weren't," McGee pushed on. "There was nothing random about it. There was a reason for each one's placement."

"Which was—?"

"They were all placed in the order that they arrived in Warehouse 19," McGee told Mr. Solo. "Once I stopped looking for the connection on the labels, I could see that the dust was much more thick on the first boxes in the warehouse than they were on the farthest away boxes. The whole labeling thing was a ploy to throw off anyone looking for anything. If you knew what you were looking for and knew the approximate time that it had arrived in Warehouse 19, you could find it."

"Which means that the only clue to what was taken was that handwritten list of objects that you just pulled up on your computer," Solo mused, rubbing his chin.

"Right." McGee was ready for the next step. "So who else would have access to this list?"

Solo looked grim. "Very few people."

"Like who?"

"Me, obviously." There was no humor in the words.

"Who else? Who else would know what is stashed in that warehouse?"

"There are six people in UNCLE who have access to that list, Agent McGee," Napoleon Solo said, "all of whom are above reproach. Because of their positions, their actions are monitored and checked again for signs that THRUSH, or any other agency, has gotten to them." He flashed a brilliant if rueful smile. "I was invited to join that elite cadre, Agent McGee. I declined. I dislike the thought of that much oversight into my personal life."

That made sense to McGee. "You're sure that no one else had access to the list? No one else?"

"Illya did," Solo admitted, "but I'd trust him with my life. In fact, I _have_ trusted him with my life, on several occasions. Believe me, Agent McGee, Illya Kuryakin would die before giving up that list. He knew what it would mean for the world."

"Brain-washing—" McGee started to say.

Solo interrupted him. "UNCLE agents are conditioned in ways that would seem like science fiction to you, Agent McGee. I'm not about to say that we can't be brain-washed, but it would take time; more time that this operation has seen. I had lunch with Illya after our routine check in at UNCLE Headquarters just last week; he insisted on going to that cafe that serves a horrible dish called _okroshka_. Even if the experts at UNCLE hadn't picked up anything, I would have noticed something awry with him."

McGee accepted that. "If THRUSH hasn't accessed the list, then how did they know what to look for?"

"Good question." Solo looked away. "How do you propose to find the answer?"

"Let's start with the details of the laser device," McGee suggested. "Names, dates, that sort of thing. Can you get that for us?"

"Security—" Solo started to object, and then interrupted himself. "No. This is the best way to clean up this mess. Trust must start somewhere, Agent McGee." He essayed a crooked smile. "Illya taught me that. At the time that I met him, the United States was in a Cold War with the now defunct Soviet Union. I'm American, and Illya Russian. We had no reason to trust each other, and our upbringings told us to keep apart. That lasted until we found ourselves in the first flurry of gunfire, and we never looked back." He sighed. "Take it from me, Agent McGee: people have a great deal more in common than they think, and it's silly not to get along. Remember that." Solo pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. "Open Channel D," he said into the microphone. "I'll need access to the Chamber of Horrors."

McGee raised his eyebrows. _Chamber of Horrors?_

"What else would you call the repository of all information known to mankind?"

* * *

Ziva had had to do many difficult things in her life, but picking up her cell phone and placing this call to Gibbs was one of the most challenging.

"Gibbs."

"Gibbs, I failed. They kidnapped Ducky."

"What?" There was horror, and fear, and many more emotions in that one word than Ziva had ever heard.

She couldn't stand it. "We'll find him, Gibbs. _I'll_ find him."

The empty hospital bed behind her, white linens awry, mocked her.

* * *

McGee put the weapon specifications up on the computer screen, but Napoleon Solo did the describing.

It was a grim group, Gibbs decided, and they deserved to be. They'd been chasing their tail on this thing and hadn't come any closer than when they started. Worse off, actually: a kidnapped medical examiner. A still missing UNCLE agent. A Mossad officer with a lump on her skull and an ache in her heart for her failure to keep Ducky safe. Gibbs could all but see the misery dripping off of her.

He'd dragged Abby up from her lab to sit in on the briefing. There were many things that Gibbs was good at, but weapons specifications—especially high tech ones from people who liked nothing better than to confuse people by using words they'd just created to describe their new inventions—was beyond him. Abby, however, could sort out the bull from the sense and turn whatever it was into something that a mere man could understand. Even the title to this thing—Photonic Attractor and Micturition Evoking Light Amplifier—gave Gibbs about as much information as a toadstool.

Solo was talking. "Illya and I came across this one in late '63," he remembered. "I won't bore you with the details of the mission, but we were assigned to separate this thing from its inventor." He pointed to the item on the screen which looked something like a child's small telescope, done in dark metal gray with a handgrip on it for ease of use. "This is a variation on a laser, back when the technology was new. Everyone realized the potential in laser technology, but THRUSH put a lot of research behind it. If I recall correctly—"

Gibbs had no doubt that Solo was recalling everything with a tremendous amount of exactitude.

"If I recall correctly, Dr. Bellagrigio's goal was to obtain world domination by threatening to bounce his laser off of the nearest satellite and destroy whatever item took his fancy. He achieved some rather spectacular results, taking out one of the statues near the Vatican. The Vatican wanted to talk about it in terms of a miracle—I don't think they were particularly fond of that statue—until we persuaded them that it was an ordinary piece of terrorism." He paused. "Perhaps not so very ordinary. It was a remarkable scientific achievement, for its time. Dr. Bellagrigio would have been an asset to science if he had chosen to use a more traditional route for his achievements. At any rate, the publicity died away very quickly."

Ziva focused on the important piece. "You say Agent Kuryakin was aware of this technology."

"Quite so, my dear. I believe it nearly singed his hair, at one point."

Abby peered at the specs on the plasma screen. "Whoa! Gibbs, this is _way_ cool! No wonder they locked this thing away. If it works, it could take down just about anything." She looked more closely at the diagrams. "You say that he bounced it off a satellite? I don't see how that could happen. The deterioration rate—"

"That was the professor's goal," Solo interrupted. "He never took it that far. Illya and I were able to remove it from his grasp before he could scale it up, which is how the weapon ended up in Warehouse 19." He looked hopefully at the lab rat. "You say that this thing isn't capable of anything larger? That it can't be used for world domination?"

Abby continued to look at the specs. "I don't think so. McGee, can you shoot this down to my computer? I want to study it there."

"Can do, Abby, and done."

Gibbs moved on to the more easily understood pieces of the case. "Next question: why this particular weapon? Why this one, and not the missile next to it? Why not something more modern, put in just last year or so?"

"It's convenient," Ziva pointed out. "I could put this into a large handbag and take it to where ever I needed to go. That is a very valuable attribute."

"But this one doesn't work," McGee argued. "If you're going to take something, you should take something that works."

"Which brings us back to my question," Gibbs said. "Why this one? What makes this one so special…" His voice trailed off. Then: "We're missing something."

"We are, Agent Gibbs," Solo agreed, "but what?"

"It's right in front of us." Gibbs struggled to figure out what it was. He tried to clarify his thoughts, thinking aloud. "Your UNCLE agent goes missing. My medical examiner, who happens to be a dead ringer for your agent, gets shot and now gets kidnapped. This laser who-hah gets stolen from Warehouse 19—"

"Wait a minute," Solo interrupted. "What did you just say?"

"The laser who-hah—"

"No. Before that. Your medical examiner…?"

It hit Gibbs as well. "Why would they kidnap Ducky if they wanted to kill him?"

It clicked for the rest of them. "It would have very easy for them to kill him in his bed when I was down," Ziva said grimly.

"Therefore, they didn't want him dead." Solo completed the thought. "So why did they shoot at him in the first place?"

"Uh…they changed their minds?" McGee asked. "It's happened before," he added plaintively, at the disdainful looks he collected. "It has."

Gibbs ignored the junior agent. "Ziva, you said you were taken from behind."

"That's right, Gibbs. I was watching the corridor."

"Which means that whoever took you down was already in Ducky's room." DiNozzo said that.

"The only person in Ducky's room was Ducky."

"Unless someone was hiding in a closet."

"There was no one in the closet. I checked. Nor under the bed."

"Therefore," Solo said, "the person in the bed was not your medical examiner. It was Illya."

"Impossible," Ziva replied flatly. "It was Ducky. We all know his face. We have worked with him for years."

"And I could have sworn with equal fervor that it was Illya Kuryakin, a man that _I_ have worked with for decades," Solo reminded her. "What other evidence do you have?"

Gibbs wasn't quite convinced. "He knew things that only Ducky would know."

Not good enough for Solo. "And he volunteered them, correct?"

"Right. He mentioned a woman that we both knew, in France."

"Did he tell you her name?"

"Yes," Gibbs started to say, then…"No. No, he didn't. Only her first name. _I_ supplied her last name." His face hardened with chagrin. "It wouldn't have been hard to get Ducky to talk. All your man needed to do was to spout a story or two that Ducky told him, and we'd swallow it: hook, line, and sinker. Which we did. So much so that we didn't bother with fingerprints, to prove his identity."

Solo offered a tight smile. "Illya Kuryakin is one of the best, and retirement hasn't slowed him down. Remember, Agent Gibbs: Illya has been preparing this cover for years. I have no doubt that he has invested time beyond what we are observing here today. If you had questioned him further, wondering if he was Dr. Mallard, it is very likely that Illya could have related additional stories from Dr. Mallard's past to convince you." He waggled a finger at Ziva. "Illya, seeing that you were concentrating on the corridor outside the room, could have easily come up from behind and rendered you unconscious. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he was playing possum for the past day, waiting for an opportunity such as this." He winked at Ziva. "Don't be hard on yourself, my dear. Illya and I have been at this game since well before you were born."

"So where is he now?" Gibbs wanted to know, before Ziva could jump in. "Why didn't he simply tell us who he was? And where is my medical examiner?" That last delivered with a certain amount of heat.

Solo shrugged expansively. "If I knew that, I suspect this case would be nearly over."

* * *

It wasn't difficult, but it _was_ time-consuming.

Illya Kuryakin had gently lowered the attractive young Mossad officer to the cold linoleum floor, thinking about how much she reminded him of a young April Dancer; the same fire, and same cleverness. The same devotion to duty. He regretted the necessity of taking her unawares, but there were too many unanswered questions and one of those questions appeared to be meandering through the United States armed forces. Dr. Mallard trusted Ziva David implicitly, but Illya was playing for higher stakes. No, better to use this technique than to risk all. The girl would awake with a headache, but nothing more.

Changing into clothing better suited to his new status was absurdly simple. It took only a minute to select a set of scrubs from a locker room, slipping into the comfortable cotton attire, and he was grimly grateful that fashion now permitted those same scrubs to be commonplace on the streets. Shoes took an extra moment—finding a pair in his size wasn't totally necessary but Illya decided that he could spend the extra moment. He was entitled at his age, wasn't he?—and then he was strolling nonchalantly out of the hospital.

How to return to the search? It was a distance away, and his head still hurt abominably from the sniper's bullet. Illya muttered something unpleasant under his breath, promising retribution for the THRUSH sniper if he ever learned who it was. He glanced at the news kiosk on the side of the street, noting that he had lost some two days in the hospital—yet another crime to lay at the feet of the THRUSH agent.

How to return to the search, to the scene? There were options: walking would take far too long. That left hiring a cab—he had no money in his purloined scrubs—or stealing a car. Illya had done both in his day, and liked neither of his options. He sighed, hoping that his former employers would see fit to reimburse whichever poor soul for that which Illya was about to appropriate. One never knew what one's former employers would do for a retiree…


	8. Most Puzzling

Abby scowled at the picture on her computer screen. "Gibbs, this doesn't make sense."

Beside her, with a scowl the equal of hers, was McGee. "The science just doesn't add up," he offered to bolster the lab rat's opinion.

"Well, _somebody_ thinks it does, McGee," Gibbs snarled.

McGee flinched, in fear of the dreaded head-whack.

Abby came to McGee's rescue. "_Somebody_ is wrong," she snapped back. "_Somebody_ isn't thinking clearly." She pointed to the screen. "Look at this, Gibbs. Laser, sure. This thing is a super powerful laser that uses an emerald as the photon amplifier to get the job done. Nice simple tube thing. Light starts here—" and she indicated the mechanism on the right side of the drawing of the device, "—travels through here, gets amplified through the emerald acting as the lens, and emerges here."

"The amount of amplification says that the laser could punch a hole through just about anything, boss," McGee offered tentatively.

"Anything, McGee?"

"Anything within reason, boss." McGee tried to backpedal.

"So, what's reasonable, McGee?"

"Uh…" McGee tried to put it in terms that Gibbs could appreciate. "Uh, three feet or so of tempered steel."

"An armored car, McGee?"

"Easy, Gibbs," Abby slipped in. "Like a hot knife through butter. Half-melted butter," she clarified.

"Boss, with the proper lens, this thing could punch a hole into a bunker," McGee told him uncomfortably.

"And that's the problem," Abby said before Gibbs could react. "It's really _really_ powerful."

"And how is that the problem, Abby?"

"'Cause Mr. Solo said that the inventor, Dr. Bellagrigio, wanted to bounce it off of a satellite, so that he could aim it anywhere in the world. Well, he can't, Gibbs. Couldn't, I mean, 'cause Mr. Solo told us that Dr. Bellagrigio died in an explosion that happened as he and Mr. Kuryakin were trying to escape. I mean, you can't do anything when you're dead except lie there and feed a bunch of worms and beetles and—"

"Abby…"

Back to the topic. "Gibbs, this laser was _too_ powerful. If Bellagrigio had tried to bounce it off of a satellite, he would have punched a hole in the satellite instead of doing a bounce. The laser beam would keep on going until it hit Jupiter, or something."

It made sense. Gibbs stared at the drawing of the laser device that Abby had up on her computer screen. "You can tell all that from this drawing?"

"That, and the specs that Mr. Solo sent along," Abby told him confidently. "Gibbs, if I wasn't actually looking at it, I never would have believed that anyone could have come up with this stuff in the sixties. I mean, this Bellagrigio guy was really smart! The way he designed this thing…"

"It's fifty years out of date," Gibbs reminded them both. "Why would anyone want it now? What could they use it for?"

McGee had the answer. "It may be fifty years old, boss, but it still could have plenty of uses. It's quiet, and it can punch holes in things like bank vaults. It can punch a hole in a plane flying over head. And it's small: you could almost fit it into the pocket of your coat."

"Not your pocket in your pants, though," Abby clarified. "It's not _that_ small. Not unless you had really really big pockets. You could tape it to your back, easy, although it would hurt really bad once somebody ripped it off. Take a lot of hair along with it, so you'd probably want to shave your back before letting anyone tape it there—"

"Too much information, Abbs." Gibbs kissed the top of her head. "Good work."

Abby beamed. "Thanks, Gibbs!"

* * *

_Is anyone ever going to find me here? I could speak at length on the process of death through lack of caloric intake as well as an abrupt cessation of hydration, but I can now categorically state that the reality of the situation dwarfs anything that I could venture to say._

_My thoughts are wandering. I drag them back to coherency, and I find them floating away yet again like butterflies released from the collector's net._

_I am quite tired. Perhaps sleep would be the best option, to drift away…_

_

* * *

_

This was not what Illya Kuryakin had thought would happen when he first had been attacked.

It had been several days ago, in Manhattan, not far from the flat that he kept. He had been on his way to a small café nearby, the one that actually knew how to cook _okroshka_, when he had been accosted by three men. If they had approached him during his meal, he would have dealt far more harshly with them. The _okroshka_ was very close to how his own mother had made it; their actions would have been unforgivable.

However, the men had attempted to steal upon him as he was walking along the street, and Illya had been curious as to why the three were interested in a retired UNCLE agent. They were not mere street toughs, looking to rob an old man. They were not the type.

Therefore, they wanted him because they thought that Illya had something specific that they could use, and quite likely that specific something would be knowledge. And, since he had been one of UNCLE's more successful agents—meaning that he was still alive—it could only mean that some descendant of THRUSH was eager to put someone or something back into business. Illya was curious. He permitted them to abduct him.

He had very little respect for this new generation of THRUSH agents. In the old days, there would be thought and planning put into an operation such as this. They would have researched Illya's background, as much as they were able, and would apply a craftily creative approach to obtaining whatever information they wanted.

Not these three. Cretins, each of them. No finesse. They seemed to think that they could simply scare the information out of him by puffing out their chests and threatening him with their fists. They thought that all they needed to do was frighten an old man with techniques that had been old during the times of the Mongol horde racing across all of Siberia.

Illya chose not to enlighten them. It would have been a mere moment's work to remove the ropes from his wrists and render them all unconscious, but he judged the method to be a slower one for determining their plan. Instead, he allowed them 'force' the retired agent into revealing just enough data so that he could figure out what they were up to.

The three were not THRUSH agents, as he suspected, but they had access to old THRUSH data, specifically information about a device known as the Photonic Attractor and Micturition Evoking Light Amplifier; PAMELA, as it had been called. That had rather surprised him, since the inventor of the device, one Dr. Enrico Bellagrigio, had perished several decades ago while attempting to take over the world. Dr. Bellagrigio, Illya recalled, liked to think big.

Once Illya had extracted all the information he could from the toughs, he removed the ropes from his wrists and the consciousness from his captors. A polite yet terse call to 911—wonderful concept, that universal distress phone call. They should have thought it up years ago—ensured that the perpetrators would spend some time in the local overcrowded jail and allowed Illya himself to explore the problem at hand.

Unfortunately, he couldn't go to UNCLE, not even to Napoleon Solo. The only people who had any idea that PAMELA existed were UNCLE agents; all the THRUSH agents had died in their ill-fated mission. That meant that an UNCLE agent was behind this, in some fashion. Given the training and techniques administered to UNCLE agents, it was likely that the conversion hadn't happened voluntarily but brain-washed agents had happened in the past and would likely happen in the future. Illya couldn't take the chance. Even Napoleon Solo, his partner: there had been that time in Vienna…

There was another problem. Illya was well aware that the PAMELA had been stored in Warehouse 19 in the D.C. area, but there was something that the rest of UNCLE did not know: Illya, reluctant to place a rather clever intact toy into the hands of anyone let alone a branch of the military, had removed a small but significant item from the PAMELA: the emerald used to focus the light that created the whole fuss and muss. Bellagrigio had created the PAMELA using that one specific gem; without it, the PAMELA was just so many paperclips welded together. Quite useless, in fact. It might make an interesting paperweight, but with so many people today trying for a paperless office environment even that fact was of questionable value.

Bottom line: without that specific emerald, the PAMELA was worthless. Only Illya Kuryakin, UNCLE agent, retired, knew where the emerald had been hidden.

Except that he didn't. Oh, he knew where _he'd_ hidden it. He remembered _exactly_ where he'd hidden it. But it wasn't there.

It had started with an acquaintance of Mr. Waverly's. During their first encounter and subsequently thereafter, Illya had caught the old man staring at him and had finally broached the subject. It turned out that the acquaintance—a lady that Mr. Waverly had served with, during The War—had a son with a remarkable resemblance to Illya. Illya, curious about this supposed doppelganger, had hunted down the son one day and found that the resemblance was more than a passing familiarity. The two were identical; they could have been twins. Illya's first thought had been to remain as far from the man as possible, for the man's own well-being, but then another thought had presented itself: what if Illya should someday need an alias? He had resolved to cultivate the plan.

So it was that when this particular emerald needed a hiding place, Illya thought of his look-alike. Dr. Donald Mallard's mother possessed a rather delightful collection of jewelry, and Illya couldn't help but believe that there was something rather touching about giving an emerald necklace to a woman that Mr. Waverly had obviously thought quite highly of. It had been a challenge to slip the piece into her jewelry box without being caught, but Illya prided himself in those days at being a rather good cat burglar.

The years had passed, and Illya himself had almost forgotten his own subterfuge. He would have been well pleased had the topic never raised its ugly head ever again, but here it was.

Someone had absconded with the mechanics of the PAMELA, murdering the poor unfortunate sailor assigned to guard Warehouse 19. It was difficult to believe that the murderers would ferret out the hiding place of the missing emerald, but then Illya hadn't believed that anyone would go after the PAMELA itself. If someone knew about the PAMELA, it wasn't a great stretch of imagination to think that they would be looking for the remaining piece.

It should have been an easy task: go to the home of Dr. Donald Mallard, slip by the man's demented mother—what a crime, that lovely mind lost to Alzheimer's!—and retrieve the emerald.

Then it started to go wrong. Dr. Mallard was home, ill with a minor ailment, and Illya had been forced to subdue the man and stash him in the basement for his own safety. Then, when he looked in the old woman's collection of jewelry, Illya couldn't find the all precious emerald, and Mrs. Mallard had attacked him with her cane. The world couldn't tell the difference between Illya Kuryakin and Donald Mallard, but Mrs. Mallard—her brain riddled with dementia—knew in an instant. Go figure.

The final blow was the arrival of Dr. Mallard's colleagues, concerned for his well-being. He had successfully managed to maintain the fictional identity, but the sniper's bullet had come out of the blue.

This whole assignment had gotten quite out of hand. It should have been a simple retrieval operation, with retired UNCLE agent Kuryakin acquiring the emerald and relocating it into the safe bosom of UNCLE Headquarters until the remainder of PAMELA could be either secured or destroyed. Instead: this.

He was once again back on track, in the home of Dr. Mallard, able to search for the emerald. This time he'd slipped in the back of the mansion and ascertained that the old woman was napping before proceeding with his search.

He still couldn't find the emerald. The piece was not in the lady's collection of jewelry, and Illya couldn't imagine where else it would be. Dr. Mallard was a bachelor, and was not the type to gift away his mother's jewelry and certainly not without her consent. Where could it be?

Even worse, Kuryakin's doppelganger had likewise disappeared. Dr. Mallard was no longer asleep in the woodbin where Kuryakin had placed him for safekeeping. Kuryakin very much doubted that the man had managed to free himself; Kuryakin prided himself on his ability to tie knots, and no mere medical examiner should have been able to acquire his freedom without some sort of assistance. And since there was still only the lady of the house present with a single attendant, Kuryakin was willing to entertain the notion that his plot had not yet been unearthed.

This was all quite puzzling.

* * *

Gibbs scowled. "I want another talk with Graybelle," he informed the team. "DiNozzo, Ziva, go get him…" His voice trailed off.

Napoleon Solo could take the hint along with the rest of the NCIS people. Gibbs had just figured something out. "Agent Gibbs?"

Gibbs slammed his fist on his desk. "We missed it! Dammit, we missed it! Get your gear, people!"

"Missed what, Agent Gibbs?" Solo was not going to be left behind.

Gibbs halted, and fixed the UNCLE agent with a glare aimed at Gibbs's own guilt. "I should have picked it up when we went to find out if Ducky was okay," he told Solo. "It was right there in front of me."

"_What_ was?"

"Mrs. Mallard." Gibbs hefted his pack over his shoulder. "She told us that it wasn't Ducky. She knew from the start that it was your agent there in the parlor, and we didn't listen. We were too busy worrying about Ducky." He paused. "I still want to talk to Graybelle," he decided. "DiNozzo, McGee, go get him. Bring him here and let him stew until I get back. Ziva, you're with me. And you, Mr. Solo," he added. "Let's try for a little more discussion with Mrs. Mallard this time."

* * *

"It's the middle of the day, Tony," McGee said, trying to be patient and failing. "Commander Graybelle's not going to be at home."

"You got a better place to look for him, McSherlock?" DiNozzo wanted to know. He pulled open the door to his sportster and slid behind the wheel. "'Cause I'm open to suggestions. You know how Gibbs gets when we don't pull in a suspect."

"We don't even know that he's a suspect," McGee objected.

"Gibbs wants him. Therefore he's a suspect. Or he'll turn into one," was DiNozzo's prediction. "For example: why isn't Graybelle behind his desk, at work, right now? Tell me that, McQuestionable."

"He could be out at a meeting, Tony. People in charge do that. They go to meetings, and do other things outside the office. He could be perfectly innocent."

"In which case, we'll find that out and he'll be off our suspect list," DiNozzo said, pulling out into traffic. "Where's the address?"

McGee named it. "It's not far from here."

The place where Graybelle made his home was an older house in one of the less prosperous sections, a mansion that had long ago been divided into several smaller apartments when the original owners fell on hard times. Remnants of a more gracious era remained along with the luxurious and overgrown azaleas long past blooming, and a tall oak spread reddened leaves onto the grass. Even as the two NCIS agents walked up to the entryway, an acorn dropped from its branch and rattled into the gutter, banging its way down to the ground. An empty birdfeeder dangled from one of the oak's branches.

"This one." DiNozzo identified the entrance that led to Graybelle's section of the house.

"It doesn't look like he's home, Tony."

"What say we ring the doorbell and find out?" Without waiting for an answer, DiNozzo pressed the bell.

No answer. DiNozzo, with a significant look at McGee, pressed it once more.

No one came to Graybelle's door, but an old woman did totter out onto the porch from the apartment adjoining Graybelle's. Her perfume, the smell covering up inadequate personal hygiene, preceded her. "He's not home," she informed them.

Not as good as Graybelle himself, but DiNozzo was willing to take what he could get. "Do you know where he is?"

"Likely at work." The woman gave him a look that clearly asked if DiNozzo had had a little too much sun to be asking a question such as that. "Some of us got to work for a living, mister. Me, I own this place. I take care of it."

Ah. The landlady, although by the looks of things, DiNozzo's standards of 'taking care of a home' differed substantially from hers. Not the point; DiNozzo would be taking advantage of every break he could get. He eased his way into a smile. "What time does he usually come home? Maybe we could come back."

"Not till late," the woman said. "_Real_ late. Sometimes about six. Once it was even later."

Considering that Gibbs routinely kept them working around the clock to finish a case, DiNozzo had little sympathy for Commander Graybelle. When he factored in the concept that Gibbs had Graybelle in mind as a suspect, he had even less.

McGee had another thought—or perhaps more insight into the landlady. He flashed his shield. "Perhaps, as his landlady, you could give us permission to look around inside? We wouldn't be long." _And this would be gossip fodder for the next month_, hung out in the breeze to dry.

DiNozzo could practically see the woman salivating with eagerness. "I don't know," she said slowly, trying to hold herself back.

DiNozzo gave her his own patented _it'll be our little secret_ smile. "You'd be helping your country, ma'am."

That pushed the woman over the edge, and she fumbled with the keys that were already in her hand, just waiting for DiNozzo and McGee to give her the opportunity to show how patriotic she could be, never mind that she was ratting on an upstanding commander of the Navy. DiNozzo relieved her of the keys when it became obvious that the trembling in her hand was going to delay them until sunset.

"Stand back, ma'am," he said gravely. _Let's do this right. Let's let her think that we're after a desperate criminal_. He planted himself along one edge of the doorframe, pulling out his handgun and watching until a puzzled McGee followed suit. The DiNozzo pushed the woman 'back out of the way so she wouldn't get hurt'. Reaching out with his other hand, he carefully turned the door knob and eased the door open. It creaked.

There was no one inside. DiNozzo advanced, McGee in his wake. "Clear," he reported tersely.

McGee finally picked up on DiNozzo's technique. "Clear," he repeated after glancing into the bedroom. "He's not here. Not in the kitchen, either."

The landlady licked her lips. "No dead body?"

"No, ma'am," DiNozzo replied gravely. "Is there some reason to think that there might be?"

"No. No, there isn't," she said, "except he got that box about a week ago."

Both agents perked up. "A box, ma'am?" McGee inquired politely.

_McGee, you're salivating as much as she did two minutes ago_.

"A box," she said again. "He got it in the mail. From overseas. I kept watch on it, on the porch, until he got home that night. Nobody tried to grab it."

"Where, ma'am—?" McGee started to say, when DiNozzo interrupted him. "You see it anywhere here?"

She looked around. "No, not really…waitaminute," she said, picking up the tempo. "That's it. That one, there. The beat up one." She pointed. And pointed again, when neither agent leaped frantically upon The Clue, preferring instead to observe it first from a distance.

The box wasn't particularly large, but it was damaged and covered with postage. It had cost quite a bit to ship it, and whoever had done the deed had done it in as cheap a manner as possible. There really wasn't any reason to think that the box was connected with the murder at Warehouse 19 or the disappearance of Ducky or the UNCLE agent or both, but DiNozzo couldn't help but feel the love emanating from the box. He reholstered his weapon, pulling out his camera instead.

McGee could barely wait until DiNozzo had finished snapping pictures before pulling on his own latex gloves to go diving into the contents, handling things by the edges in an effort to preserve any potential fingerprints. He pulled out the first stack of papers, the sheets yellowed with age. "Tony, this looks a lot like the stuff that Mr. Solo showed us. See, here's a line diagram of the tube. I can't read this," he complained, peering closely at the papers in his hands. "What is this, Latin? It's not Spanish."

DiNozzo took the page from McGee and focused on the words. "Not Spanish, McGarcia. Italian. Looks, there's the word for emerald. _Smeraldo_," he said, rolling his tongue around the word.

McGee stared at him. "I didn't know you spoke Italian."

"With a name like DiNozzo? Gotta pick up a few words here and there, probie."

"Knowing the word for 'emerald' is not just a few words," McGee muttered, almost under his breath.

DiNozzo smirked. "You speak computer, I speak Italian. What's the rest of that—"

_Crash! _

Something flew in through the window, shattering the glass as it went.

DiNozzo knew instantly what it was. "Bomb! Hit the deck!" He barreled into the landlady, taking her down to the safety of the floor behind the sofa, sensing more than seeing McGee dive behind the easy chair.

_Pow!_

Everything went black.


	9. I've Studied Your File

"Agent Gibbs! Do come in," Mrs. Mallard invited the team leader, waving her hand graciously to beckon him forward. "And you've brought guests. How lovely!"

"Mrs. Mallard," Gibbs returned politely. "This is Mr. Solo, and Officer David you've already met."

"Have I?" Mrs. Mallard peered intently at Ziva. "No, I don't think so. A bit of a hoyden, isn't she?" she added in an aside to Gibbs. "Can't you find her a proper skirt to wear instead of those ridiculous men's pants?"

Solo stepped forward, and took the dowager by the hand. "Mrs. Mallard," he said, "it's a pleasure to finally meet you. I've heard so much about you."

Mrs. Mallard dimpled, the expression unexpectedly welcoming. "What a nice young man you are," she exclaimed to the gray-haired UNCLE agent. "Do come in for a spot of tea."

"I'd love to," Solo replied, "but we're looking for your son. Have you seen him?"

"Donald?" A vague cloud passed over—and through—her eyes, and she looked at him sadly. "My Donald is missing. You'll find him for me, won't you? He's all I have left."

"I'll do my best, Mrs. Mallard," Solo promised her, and he shifted his gaze for a brief yet meaningful glance at Gibbs. "When did you last see him?"

"Three days ago," she told him promptly, the vagueness shattered with unnerving speed. "There was another man here resembling him, but it wasn't Donald. I don't know who he was. He didn't introduce himself." Mrs. Mallard's features hardened. "He thought I wouldn't notice. As if a mother wouldn't know her own son."

Solo arrowed in, keeping his tone mild. "What did he want?"

The moment had passed, and the fog moved in once again. "Do stay for tea, dear boy, and regale me with tales from our youth. Neddy!" she trilled to the back room. "Neddy, be a dear and serve the tea."

"It's ready, Mrs. Mallard," came an equally as vague voice from the parlor, and almost as high pitched. "I've made scones and sliced the tea bread."

It was Seaman Van Olnicker, relieved of McGee's computer data entry duty for the express task of providing supervision for Dr. Mallard's mother. He wore a pink frilly apron around his middle, and a charming puff of flour on his nose. Gibbs spared a moment for sympathy for McGee, putting up with the young seaman. He glared pointedly at the apron, raising one disapproving eyebrow.

Van Olnicker faltered, his eyes dropping to the decidedly non-regulation portion of his uniform. "Uh…it was the only thing available, sir…"

Unfortunately for Seaman Van Olnicker, Gibbs was substantially less impressed with the young man's honesty than Van Olnicker's mother had been. "You weren't assigned here on KP duty, seaman. You were assigned on guard duty. Although KP can be arranged," he added dangerously.

Seaman Van Olnicker blanched. "Uh, yes, sir, sir," he stammered. He went to take off the apron, and succeeded only in spreading more flour onto his neatly pressed uniform with the extra darts that showed off his ever-so-charmingly-trim waistline.

Gibbs wasn't finished. "Seen anything unusual while you were on _guard duty_, seaman?" he pressed.

"Uh…no, sir?"

"Is that a question or an answer, seaman?"

"Uh…an answer, sir?"

There would be follow up to this interlude of Seaman Van Olnicker's life. Gibbs made that a promise. "Look after Mrs. Mallard, Von Olnicker. Anything happens to her, you'll answer to me."

"Yes, sir. Sir. Sir." If there was a fate worse than that which Gibbs had just dictated, Van Olnicker didn't know it. He fled back to the kitchen before the tears started.

Ziva was just as displeased with the young man's performance of his duties. "I'll check the perimeter."

"You do that, Ziva." Gibbs had a great deal more confidence in the Mossad officer's abilities and wanted a little more reassurance than knowing that the scones hadn't burned in the oven. He glanced at the UNCLE agent. "I'll check upstairs."

Solo nodded in acceptance. "Mrs. Mallard, why don't you and I have a little chat? Tell me all about the man who resembled your son." He drew Mrs. Mallard off in the direction of the parlor, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm.

* * *

Dr. Donald Mallard was no stranger to hardship. He had served honorably in the Middle East, had done his country proud during covert missions that were still classified as 'top secret', and for the last many years was still contributing to the cause of justice to all by providing the evidence that placed murderers and such behind bars where they belonged.

This current situation was a bit more than he bargained for.

Nothing about this made any sense. He had gone home some evenings ago—he had quite lost track of the amount of time. Given the circumstances, he forgave himself the error—only to find a man wearing Dr. Mallard's own face rooting about in his own things. The man had promptly applied pressure to both carotid arteries with a skill that Ducky himself would appreciate under better conditions, and Ducky knew no more until he awoke in a small and cramped dark space. Shouting for aid was out of the question; he was tied and gagged most efficiently.

That had gone on for an interminable period, and Ducky feared that no one would find him until too late.

That might have been a better option. Dazed, hungry and thirsty beyond anything he had ever experienced, Ducky was finally rescued by a naval commander and a group of what could only be described as thugs. Not Thugs of the Thuggee cult; Ducky recalled coming across several of such while stationed in India. Those Thuggee was some of the last to attack the caravans crossing the roads to the Punjab before the cult had been wiped out, and Ducky had had the misfortune to be attached to that caravan…

Ducky wrenched his thoughts back to the present with an effort. The commander—who would be dishonorably discharged once Jethro Gibbs finished with him—and his gang had rescued and revived Dr. Mallard from his predicament and then gone on to question him most harshly about some woman by the name of Pamela. They seemed to believe that he was a Russian UNCLE agent. Ridiculous; anyone could see just by looking at him that Dr. Mallard's formative years had been spent in the British Empire, not some Slavic nation recently restored to independence by the fall of the Iron Curtain. Had the commander no sense at all? And who was this Pamela?

His throat was sore, and his voice hoarse; the commander hadn't believed Dr. Mallard in the slightest and had made that fact painfully evident. Ducky had been quite grateful to slip back into unconsciousness.

Now that he was awake once more, how long would it be before the commander arrived yet again to question him?

* * *

Perfume versus body odor: the stench won out.

DiNozzo rolled over and breathed through his mouth, begging the contents of his stomach to remain where they were and not coming shooting out to land…where?

His surroundings slowly made themselves known: he was lying on the carpet of Commander Graybelle's first floor apartment, and the perfume stench and most of the body odor was coming from the landlady who was lying unconscious next to him with DiNozzo's arms flung protectively over her. DiNozzo's first thought was gratitude: gratitude that Ziva wasn't around to laugh at him. A scene such as this—arms around an older woman with enough cologne to knock over a bull in heat—would only give her fodder for more sniping.

The woman wasn't moving; wait a minute. Yes, she was. She was breathing. Good. One less thing on his conscience: she wasn't dead. DiNozzo pulled his arms off of her torso, dismayed at how weak he felt. What the hell happened?

Oh, yeah. Bomb. Lots of noise. DiNozzo had thought for certain that he and McGee were goners, victims of a hand grenade tossed in through Graybelle's window. Who had Graybelle pissed off so much that they wanted to kill him?

"Police! Open up!"

Crap. Somebody must have called 911, and the locals were responding. DiNozzo tried to call out to them, to identify himself, dismayed that all he could do was croak.

"Sarge, we got two bodies in here!"

"They alive?"

"Don't think so." Someone wearing more flak gear than any of the soldiers in the Middle East and holding a handgun large enough to assure him of his manhood kicked DiNozzo's own gun further away from DiNozzo's hand. He reached for the pulse in DiNozzo's neck.

"Hey," DiNozzo objected with as much force as he could muster. Once again, only the barest whisper of sound emerged.

"Shit!" The flak-jacketed man jumped back.

_Must be a rookie. This your first crime scene, rookie? Not gonna be your last, I'll guarantee that._

"Who are you?" the rookie demanded, aiming his cannon at DiNozzo's head.

"NCIS," DiNozzo choked out, hoping that it sounded intelligible. He reached for his pocket, intending to pull out his badge.

"Don't move!" the rookie screeched. "Sarge, he's got a gun!"

_Yeah. You knocked it away from my hand. Get a grip, kid_.

Sarge apparently was of a sterner caliber than his young partner. The grizzled older man took one look, and went down on one knee to first recheck that DiNozzo was still breathing and then to pull out DiNozzo's badge. He flipped it open. "NCIS. Put your gun away, Johnnie. He's one of ours."

"Ours? What's this NCSI, Sarge?"

"NCIS," Sarge repeated patiently, and turned back to DiNozzo. "You hurt bad, son?"

"I…" The word dissolved into a spasm of coughing, preventing DiNozzo from any words at all.

"Don't see any blood," Sarge told him, trying to reassure the NCIS agent. Then a puzzled look came over the older cop's face, and he sniffed the air. "Johnnie, let's get these two out of here now! I'm smelling something!"

_Yeah, I can smell it, too. Starting … to feel…dizzy…again…_

_

* * *

_

This time he awoke with someone pressing a mask against his face, forcing oxygen down his throat. He coughed, determined to speak this time and head off whatever nonsense the rookie would be spouting. DiNozzo opened his eyes.

"Yup." If the rookie could have patted himself on the back, he would have. As it was, the way the kid was talking to the two female reporters, DiNozzo wouldn't have been surprised if a Medal of Honor floated down from the skies to land on the kid's shoulders. "_I_ smelled something funny, and _I_ dragged 'em out. They would've been dead in there if I hadn't. We're getting an ambulance for this one here. Hope he makes it."

Hah. Guess DiNozzo remembered wrong when he heard the older cop issue instructions to get the hell out. Guess the left over gas from the grenade was more powerful than the first dose of the stuff. _Right._

Not the point. DiNozzo struggled to sit up. He needed to notify Gibbs immediately, get a team out here to work the scene, figure out why it had happened, what the hell was so important in that box—

Crap. The box.

"Box…" he croaked, hoping that his vocal chords would cooperate.

Sarge understood, but kept the oxygen mask pressed tightly against DiNozzo's face. "Breathe deep, son," he instructed. "You got a good whiff of the stuff. Knocked you off your feet."

"Crap." That word seemed to come out with more clarity, for Sarge chuckled.

"Got the old lady heading out in the first ambulance," he said into DiNozzo's ear. "You're next, feller. You got a superior officer you want notified?"

Did he want Gibbs notified? Hell, yes! Even a head whack would be welcome, because it would mean that Gibbs was on the scene, taking charge.

Still, there was important evidence in that apartment, evidence that the locals wouldn't know to protect. DiNozzo tried again. "Get…the damn…box."

This time Sarge heard what he was trying to get out. "Box? What box, son?"

"In…the living…room…" DiNozzo coughed again, trying to breathe through the garbage clogging his throat.

Sarge pressed the mask more tightly over DiNozzo's face. "Didn't see no box. You sure? Maybe you were hallucinating."

Flare of adrenaline. "Dammit, go check!" DiNozzo snarled, the words coming out more clearly with heat behind them. He tried to raise himself up, and failed.

Sarge understood. "You sit right here," he instructed DiNozzo, and raised his voice. "Johnnie, you watch him. Make sure he gets on the next ambulance while I check inside."

"Sarge—?" The rookie looked torn between his duty and his admirers.

Sarge didn't offer the kid an opportunity for independent decision-making. "You stay," he said firmly. "I'm going to go check inside."

There was something else, something niggling at DiNozzo's brain, and he slowly and painfully brought it up for examination. "Where's McGee?"

"Who?" Sarge halted on a dime.

It took too long for DiNozzo to stop hacking the gas out of his lungs. "McGee," he gasped, trying to inhale between coughs. "My…partner…"

Sarge's eyes narrowed. "Didn't see no other bodies inside." He issued orders. "Johnnie, you call for another squad to come back us up. I'm not liking what's going on here. Then you help this feller to call his superior officer. Seems to me the best thing we can do is to dump this case back onto NCIS shoulders real quick-like."

* * *

"She's with that young seaman of yours, relating stories from her experiences during the War," Solo said, returning to Gibbs and joining the man as he exited a bedroom.

"Which one? One or Two?" Gibbs closed the door behind him.

"You know, I'm not really sure? Some of the details are a bit jumbled," Solo acknowledged. "Charming woman. I can see why Mr. Waverly remembered her. My old boss," he clarified. "He only mentioned meeting her once or twice, but with Mr. Waverly you learned to remember everything he said. It tended to come in handy, sooner or later." He returned to the business at hand. "You find anything upstairs?

Gibbs jerked his thumb at the door, indicating Ducky's bedroom. "Actually, yes. Ducky's things were rifled through. They weren't in order."

"I presume that's not like Dr. Mallard."

"Not a bit," Gibbs agreed. "Ducky keeps his things neat. Mrs. Mallard, that's a different story. Her things, especially her jewelry, are covering her bureau in her room, dumped in a heap. You couldn't tell if anything was missing. Ducky's, you could."

"Anything like an emerald, you mean," Solo said ruefully.

"Both of them have emerald jewelry," Gibbs said, "but not the size and shape of the emerald that your PAMELA diagram talks about. Mrs. Mallard has a diamond necklace with a few small chips of emerald to either side. Ducky has emerald cufflinks."

Solo moved on to the pertinent part. "The fact that Dr. Mallard's things are disorganized suggests that someone has gone through them, looking for the emerald. Do you suppose that he or she found it?"

"We'd better hope not," Gibbs grunted. "That would mean that the suspect has both the weapon and the emerald to make it tick."

"And that would be bad," Solo agreed. "Very bad." He tapped a finger onto his chin. "Where could it be?" He interrupted himself. "We still haven't located Illya. It could be that he slipped in here and got it. It would be like him."

"Then why hasn't he shown up?" Gibbs asked.

"That, Agent Gibbs, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question," Solo admitted. "I don't suppose you have any tricks up your sleeve for finding him? Or your medical examiner?" He tapped his breast coat pocket where he kept his cell phone. "My own don't seem to be of much use."

Gibbs let his gaze scan the hall where the two stood, not so much seeing the carpet runner on the floor or the flower-filled vase on the side table as letting his focus turn inward. "Where would they be, either one of 'em?"

"Where would the emerald be?" Solo countered. He leaned over to peer into the vase, prodding aside the tulip stems. "Not there."

"Gibbs!" It was Ziva, calling up from the first floor.

Gibbs perked up. "You find him?"

Ziva arrived at the top of the stairs, her eyes automatically taking in the pair standing there and everything around them. "No, however I did find evidence that someone else has entered Ducky's home, and recently. There were scratches on the lock to the back door. They looked new."

"Not Illya," Solo said promptly. "What?" he complained mildly at their suspicious look. "Really, give the man a _little_ credit for technique. Leaving scratches behind? Neither Illya nor I have done that—unintentionally—since well before the fall of the Berlin Wall."

Ziva shrugged, not quite conceding the point. "Gibbs, I believe that Ducky's house has been broached by someone or someones unknown—"

"Breached, not broached," Gibbs corrected, more for Solo's benefit than Ziva's.

Another shrug. "—and that they did not find what they wished to find," she concluded.

"Quite right," came a voice from behind them.

All three whirled around.

A man had slipped up on them, a man of slight stature, wispy blond hair going gray atop his head, and blue eyes taking in the appearance of all three agents. The blue eyes, Gibbs noted, lacked their usual twinkle of energy. The man, however, was dressed as Gibbs usually saw him: in scrubs. Gibbs ventured a guess, very much doubting its accuracy. "Ducky?"

Solo was equally as certain—or uncertain. "Illya?"

The person before them solved the riddle. "Hello, Napoleon. Good of you to finally catch up."

Gibbs couldn't help but stare. The man he was looking at could easily fool a casual onlooker, and Gibbs didn't consider himself to be casual. Even the voice was the same: the same timbre, the same cadences… It was uncanny.

Kuryakin himself was well aware of the similarity. "Agent Gibbs," he greeted the NCIS team leader, proving that the retired agent had done his homework. "It is good to finally meet you officially."

"Officially," Gibbs echoed, still staring, trying and failing to find something that would distinguish the man in front of him from Dr. Mallard. "I assume you mean the first time, when you pretended to be Ducky and got shot."

Kuryakin gave a tight smile. "That will serve."

"There were other times?" A dangerous note.

Solo intervened. "Agent Gibbs, please grant us a little understanding. Illya and I may be retired, but that doesn't mean we've retired _all_ of our skills." He gestured toward Ducky's bedroom door. "Had Illya not attended to his small subterfuge, the world might be a far more dangerous place at the moment." He looked hard at his partner. "Uh…you _do_ have the emerald, Illya?"

"I'm afraid I don't, Napoleon." Illya looked grim. "It wasn't here. I have been looking for it diligently. Likewise, Dr. Mallard has disappeared and, considering the state I left him in, I very much fear that he has been mistaken for me by THRUSH and removed to their lair." He put a hand to his forehead, rubbing at the pink and healing wound still there. "Might we withdraw to some place where we can sit and be comfortable? After all, I was recently shot."

Gibbs was still staring at the UNCLE agent, searching for some distinguishing mark. The only one he could find at the moment was that very same bullet wound that he once feared had ended Ducky's life. "Downstairs. In the parlor. Ducky's parlor," he couldn't help but add.

Solo wore a mischievous grin. "I believe we might even persuade the lady of the house to serve tea—and scones," he said.

Gibbs started to glower, but his cell phone interrupted him. He noted the name on the small screen: it was DiNozzo. "Gibbs. What'cha got, DiNozzo?"

"Uh…Is this Special Agent Leroy Gibbs?"

_Not_ DiNozzo. Alarm flared. "Who's this?"

"Uh…This is Officer Johnnie—er, _John_ Garanski, D. C. Metro. Police, I mean."

Gibbs had had enough of stammering children. He had one downstairs, tending to Mrs. Mallard, and he didn't need another one on DiNozzo's cell phone. "Where's DiNozzo?"

"He's…uh…he's on his way to DC General. The hospital, I mean. In an ambulance."

"What the hell happened?"

"There…uh…was a bomb—"

"A bomb?" Gibbs felt cold clutch at his belly, and he could see the same fear seep into the others at his words.

"Uh…yeah—"

"What about McGee?"

"Uh…who?"

"DiNozzo's partner." Gibbs felt like reaching through the phone and ripping the answers out of the stuttering rookie on the other end.

"Uh…we didn't find any other bodies, sir. Except the landlady. Her. She's okay, too. In an ambulance, I mean. So I guess she's not okay."

"Secure the scene." Gibbs wasn't in the rookie's chain of command, and that didn't matter one iota. "I'll have a team there in five minutes." He snapped the phone shut before any more lunacy or stuttering could emerge. He looked around; he was running out of people. Not people, exactly, but agents he could trust to act like competent agents.

Too many places he needed to be. He needed to be at the scene of the bomb. He needed to stay here and hunt for that damn emerald before enemy agents found it and put one of the most dangerous weapons back into action. He needed to find McGee, and he needed to go to the hospital where they were taking DiNozzo to see if he needed to replace a damn fine agent on his team.

Solo understood. He turned to Illya. "The emerald?"

"Not here," Illya returned. "Not unless Mrs. Mallard decided to place it in the bread box."

"I checked," Ziva responded. "It is not there. Nor is it hidden in the good china, and not even in Ducky's wine cellar."

Illya favored her with an approving smile. "First place I looked, young lady. By the way, I must apologize for my behavior at the hospital. I couldn't be certain that you were on my side, not at that moment."

"Quite understandable." Ziva forgave the retired agent on the spot. "Your technique was flawless. I was impressed." She turned back to her boss. "Where do you want me, Gibbs?"

Gibbs pursed his lips. "Go to the bomb scene. Check it out; track down McGee. _Find_ him, Ziva." He indicated the two UNCLE agents. "Take them with you. I'll get a statement from DiNozzo." _And make certain that he's all right_.

Ziva nodded. "Let's go," she told the pair. "I'll drive."

"_I'll_ drive," Solo put in firmly. "Young lady, I've studied _your_ file as well. _I'll_ drive."


	10. That Sounds Rather Egomaniacal

"Timothy. Timothy, wake up."

"'M too tired to go to school, Mom."

However, as the sleep seeped away from his consciousness, McGee realized that the voice calling to him was most definitely not his mother's. His mother did not possess a light baritone, nor did she speak with an accent born and bred on the Other Side of the Pond.

"Timothy, wake up."

"Ducky?" McGee finally placed the voice. He opened his eyes—and instantly regretted it. Light stabbed in, jamming an ice pick between his brows that even closing his eyes didn't touch.

"Don't try to move quite yet, dear boy," Ducky advised in a raspy voice. "They've informed me that the effects wear off eventually."

That brought up a number of questions for McGee, starting with _who were they?_, meandering through _what effects?_, and finally ending up with _when is 'eventually'?_ None of which he voiced; keeping his stomach in its usual spot seemed to be a much higher priority at the moment and that involved maintaining a closed mouth.

He let his other senses tell him about his new surroundings: he was flat on a rather cold and drafty pallet, and there was no pillow cushioning his head from the hard wooden slats beneath him. No blankets, either, which accounted for the drafts. Wait; no, it didn't. McGee would have to open his eyes to figure out where the drafts were coming from. Those, then, could wait.

Smell: dank and dusty. Sound: the occasional clank of metal meeting metal with a few metallic _chinks_ to indicate that more metal was trying to contract in response to the chill. He could hear Ducky breathing across the room—hah, the air had a particularly _cavernous_ echo to it, as though they were in a very large space.

Ducky saved him the pain of re-opening his eyes. "They dragged you in approximately an hour ago, Timothy. I'll recommend pretending continued unconsciousness; from what they said, I rather think they expect you to perform some task for them."

McGee opened his mouth to respond, and promptly dissolved into coughing.

Ducky waited for him to finish. "Better?" he asked. "I'm sorry; I have no water for you. Or for me, for that matter," he added grimly. "Our captors don't seem to believe in providing the necessities of life."

McGee finally re-opened his eyes, relieved to find that the ice pick had diminished to a mere toothpick: uncomfortable, but bearable as long as he didn't move. "Where are we?"

"Good question, Agent McGee. I have no idea."

McGee stared at Ducky, not liking what he saw. It wasn't the fact that the medical examiner had been tied to a hard wooden chair, wrists fastened tightly to the arms of chair, although that was disturbing enough. No, it was the heavy lines on the man's face, the crevices deepened by pain and suffering and deprivation, things that no one—let alone a man of Dr. Mallard's years—should be put through. The bruise on Ducky's cheek edging up to give him a black eye was only a small part of it. The raspy voice suggested more of the same. The hoarseness suggested a lot of screaming in the recent past.

Footsteps sounded in the distance, and McGee, remembering Ducky's earlier words, immediately closed his eyes to feign sleep once again. There were several footsteps, suggesting three or possibly four people approaching and perhaps more. Men, McGee thought; there were no lighter steps among the heavy tapping of hard-soled shoes. No athletic shoes, either, which meant that whoever was walking over to them wasn't up for a rousing game of hoops. Good; neither was McGee.

Not just feet marching along, either. Along with the shoes came the sounds of squeaky wheels, as though something heavy was being pushed in their direction. McGee had to fight to keep his eyes closed, wondering what it was.

He didn't have to wait long. A dry voice dropped words: "Don't bother, Agent McGee. I know you're awake. I heard you talking to Dr. Mallard. Sound carries pretty well in here."

Ducky threw himself into the mix. "At least you finally believe me, that I am not this Kuryakin fellow."

"Let's say that I am seventy five percent convinced. I understand that you UNCLE agents can do a remarkable job of undercover work. That was how you fooled my father to his death, wasn't it?"

"I never met your father," Ducky responded wearily. "Why won't you believe me?"

"Because, Dr. Mallard," the voice hissed, "the moment I think that you are not Illya Kuryakin, you cease to be of value to me.

"Now, Agent McGee," and McGee could hear the man turning to face him, "you will open your eyes or I will kill this man on the spot."

No use pretending any longer. It would only get Ducky killed; assuming it really was Ducky, and not the UNCLE agent. Their captor did have that one thing right: retired or not, Kuryakin was really good at his job.

It was Ducky. McGee _thought_ it was Ducky. Of course, if it really were the UNCLE agent Kuryakin, that was what he would want everyone to believe, wasn't it?

McGee's head hurt, and it wasn't just the leftover effects of whatever it was that they had used on him.

"X349," the voice said.

_Beg pardon?_

"X349," the voice repeated with relish. "The designation of the gas used to knock you out so we could bring you here. Another invention of my father's. He was a brilliant man."

"Wait a minute." McGee couldn't help but speak up this time. "You're going to tell me that he invented both the laser device _and _an anesthetic gas? Those are two completely different fields of science. I don't believe it. One, okay, but not two."

The shadow of the man loomed over McGee lying flat. Even through closed eyes McGee could sense the sudden decrease in light.

_Oops_. McGee's eyes weren't closed any longer. They merely had trouble focusing. Sometime not too long ago his eyes had lost the fight to stay closed and pretending to be asleep, and now he was staring at a short and stocky man with sharply barbered black hair and an attitude.

The vision finally cleared enough for McGee to figure out who was standing over him. "Commander Graybelle."

Graybelle uttered a triumphant snarl. "No longer. I can finally take up the name that I lost so many years ago: Bellagrigio. Do you hear me, Agent McGee? I was named for my _father_, Dr. Enrico Bellagrigio, senior. I am his heir, and possessor of all of his secrets!"

"Do you have any idea how egomaniacal that sounds?" Ducky asked tiredly from his tied up position on his chair. "I've heard Agent DiNozzo declaim similar lines with identical fervor, quoting from B movies from the fifties. They were ridiculous then, and just as ridiculous now."

Graybelle—or Bellagrigio, junior—scowled at them both. "We'll see how ridiculous they sound when I take over the world." He gestured to his henchmen.

_Henchmen_. There. McGee hadn't said it, but he'd thought it and it sounded just as bad inside his brain as it would have uttered aloud.

It didn't matter. The men pushed over a metal contraption on wheels, the same squeaky noise that McGee had wondered about when he'd heard Graybelle and his men approach. They positioned the Rube Goldberg device in front of Ducky.

"What's that?" McGee asked nervously. Graybelle obviously had something in mind, and McGee didn't have a clue as to what it was.

"Incentive," Graybelle replied. "You, Agent McGee, have a master's of science from MIT, correct?"

"Uh…yes." There was no point in trying to hide. Apparently Graybelle had been doing as much computer research as NCIS had.

"Good." Graybelle indicated the second metal table that his henchmen had dragged over, a table with wheels equally as squeaky as the first. There was a beat up box on top of the table, covered in canceled postage. It looked vaguely familiar. Next to the box sat the all important weapon that had been stolen from Warehouse 19. McGee recognized it from the diagrams that Solo had obtained for the NCIS team.

"Those are the prototype and the plans for the design of the weapon that my father invented," Graybelle informed them. "The Photonic Attractor and Micturition Evoking Light Amplifier." Clearly Graybelle had practiced saying the term, over and over again, until he could utter it properly.

McGee blinked. "Say what?"

"PAMELA," Graybelle ground out. "The laser gun."

"Oh," said McGee. "That."

"Yes. That." Graybelle tried to regain his composure and his sense of superiority. "You will read the design plans, and you will get it to work."

McGee remembered where he'd seen the box. "Those papers, in the box. It was in your apartment. I saw it there."

"Which is why I knocked you out and brought you here," Graybelle agreed. "You, McGee, are a scientist, like my father. Don't try to deny it. I _heard_ you, there inside my apartment, before I knocked you out. You understand his work, how to use his diagrams. You will follow his plans, and make the PAMELA function the way he intended."

"Uh…" McGee tried to think fast, and failed. "Uh…you do realize that my degree is in _computer_ science? That won't do much for your father's weapon. Physics, or maybe mechanical engineering. That's what you need. Not computers. Modern computer languages didn't even exist back then."

"What do you mean?" Graybelle's eyes went dead.

"I mean, this stuff isn't really my specialty." Would this explanation help McGee, or just enrage the man? He tried a different tack, one that seemed a little safer. "Uh…it's in Italian. I don't speak or read Italian."

"I do." Graybelle wasn't going to accept that excuse. "And you don't need to read Italian. You can read the blueprints." He leaned over McGee, prone on the slab, breathing into his face. "You are going to read those blueprints, and you are going to fix the PAMELA so that it functions."

This was _so_ not going the way McGee wanted. He cast about helplessly, looking for something that wouldn't infuriate their captor. "I can't make it work, not unless you get me the emerald that your father used. That was the focal point. Without that emerald, it's useless."

"You will make it work," Graybelle insisted. "I will get the emerald for you to use, and you will make PAMELA jump at my command!" He straightened up. "Because if you don't, there will be consequences!"

"Consequences?" That didn't sound good.

It wasn't. Graybelle gestured to his henchmen, working with the second contraption in front of Ducky. McGee looked at what they were doing.

The largest and most frightening piece of the contraption was a long serrated metal blade, and it was positioned some three inches away from Ducky's chest. The metal glinted in the dim light of the warehouse, and looked all the more vicious for the lack of illumination. The rest of the contraption, housed in a gray steel box with an unfortunate rust spot over one corner where it had been exposed to the elements, seemed designed to propel the blade forward to pierce whatever happened to be in the path of the blade.

Ducky's voice was astoundingly steady. "What do you intend?"

Graybelle spoke to Ducky, but his attention was on McGee. "The blade will advance an average of one inch per hour. Unless Special Agent McGee fixes PAMELA, the blade will slowly pierce your skin, go through the muscle, and into your heart. You—Kuryakin or Mallard or whoever you are—will be dead." He paused. "Special Agent McGee, this man's life is in your hands."

McGee went cold. _Tony, this ought to be you. This is straight out of a mad scientist movie._

_

* * *

_

"Let 'em through, Johnnie," Sarge directed, waving at the rookie stationed by the yellow crime scene tape to prevent the bystanders from crowding onto the scene. This was the most excitement most of them had seen in years, and the neighbors were determined to make the most of it. If they couldn't have been around for the explosion, they were certainly going to be there for the aftermath and the chance to be seen on nation-wide television declaiming how civilization was going to hell in a handbasket.

Solo gallantly raised the tape for Ziva to walk under, following her and allowing Kuryakin to trail after, thus missing—or explicitly ignoring—the glare from the Russian agent.

Kuryakin had changed out of the hospital scrubs, taking advantage of his doppelganger's wardrobe to put on something more appropriate for conducting an investigation related to a world-threatening weapon, complaining all the while that Dr. Mallard's clothing tended more toward formality than athleticism. Solo had ignored the comments and, taking her cue from her new partner, so had Ziva.

The Mossad agent tried to put her newly acquired NCIS investigative skills to work. She observed the ground around the entrance. "It is impossible to tell how many men were here," she said. "The ground is covered with footprints."

"That's right, ma'am." Sarge wasn't apologetic. "We checked out the inside first thing, looking for your man's partner that he said was in there. He weren't."

"Over here." Kuryakin drew their attention to the bush directly beneath one of the blown out windows. "There is only a single set of footprints here. This may be the location of the bomber, prior to tossing the bomb inside."

"I think you're right, Illya." Solo came around to peer over his partner's shoulder. He used the breadth of his hand for a rough measurement of the print. "Fairly small man. Shoe size not too large."

"But stocky," Ziva put in, noting the depth of the prints. "Short and fat, perhaps?"

"Or muscle," Kuryakin said. He straightened up. "Let's see what we can find inside."

Ziva, with her newfound sense of the American justice system, attempted to hold the UNCLE agents back before entering the soot-blackened apartment. "This is a crime scene," she informed them. "If we do not document all aspects of the scene and obtain evidence, the lawyers may force the release of the suspects on what they call 'a technicality'." She snapped a quick three pictures of the entrance to Graybelle's apartment.

Solo raised his eyebrows. "My dear girl, what makes you think that this case will go to court?"

That stopped Ziva, but only for a moment. A broad smile crept over her face. "Mr. Solo," she announced, "I believe that I will very much enjoy working with UNCLE."

"Quite so," Kuryakin said, taking Ziva's hand and tucking it into his arm. "Shall we proceed?"

"I saw her first, Illya," Solo protested, reaching for Ziva's other hand.

"Sorry, Napoleon. _I_ saw her first."

"But you were Dr. Mallard at the time. That doesn't count."

"It most certainly does, Napoleon."

"_You_ knocked her out. Is that any way to treat a lady?"

"It was global security, Napoleon—"

"Perhaps we might investigate?" Ziva inquired archly. She indicated the entrance to the apartment, the door hanging askew from only one of the two remaining hinges. "Whether or not this case is prosecuted, we still need information to find McGee—and PAMELA."

* * *

"I'm okay, boss. Spring me."

Looking at DiNozzo, Gibbs had his doubts. His senior agent was lying on the emergency room stretcher, sucking oxygen through a mask, drinking a tasty mixture of sugar water through a tube running directly into his vein, looking as though a year-long nap would be in his best interest.

Not the eyes, though. DiNozzo's eyes burned with anger. "They find McGee?"

"Not yet," Gibbs was forced to say. "Ziva's at the crime scene. She says there's nothing there. They can't find Graybelle, either; they must have taken him as well."

DiNozzo frowned. "Why would they want Graybelle?" he started to ask, and then came up with his own answer. "Of course. They must have known that the commander had access to the listing of the things in Warehouse 19. They grabbed him to get to that list."

Gibbs nodded slowly. "It's a possibility. Why McGee?"

"They need him to read the blueprints?"

"Doesn't make sense." Gibbs knew that for a fact. "McGee is an NCIS agent, not a research engineer. Maybe there's something computerized that they need him to hack into. That makes more sense."

"It does." DiNozzo carefully avoided nodding his head, which was how Gibbs knew that the senior NCIS agent was faking better health than he possessed.

Didn't matter. DiNozzo was alive and reasonably healthy, and McGee was missing, along with Ducky. _Priorities, Gibbs. Find your missing people, before they turn up as corpses._ "The first people on the scene of your bomb said you kept talking about a box. What box, DiNozzo?"

DiNozzo looked up, startled. "Damn! I forgot all about it. Boss, we found a box on the coffee table in Graybelle's living room, covered in stamps. Most of it was in Italian; it was some sort of diagram. McGee thought it looked like the PAMELA but wasn't quite sure." He grimaced. "Then all hell broke loose."

"Italian?" Gibbs didn't think that the name Graybelle sounded particularly Italian, but lots of generations had changed their names during their first look at Lady Liberty. Still…He flipped open his cell phone. "Ziva? Gibbs. Look for any papers written in Italian. That's right; Italian. DiNozzo remembers a box with a lot of papers in it before the place blew up. Try to find it. I'll bring DiNozzo over."

DiNozzo ripped the oxygen mask from his face, sliding his feet off of the stretcher and onto the floor. "Let's go."

Mistake. All the color drained suddenly from his face, and only Gibbs grabbing the man and wrestling him back onto the stretcher saved DiNozzo from an ignominious face plant on the cold linoleum floor.

"Ya think ya might want to take it a bit slower, DiNozzo?"

* * *

McGee couldn't concentrate. The box filled with papers diagramming the PAMELA sat on the metal table in front of him, and he could barely take in a single picture. The words were beyond him: his high school Spanish didn't even begin to prepare him for the scientifically advanced Italian that graced the diagrams. He poured through one page after the next, frantically searching for something understandable that he could use to stave off certain disaster. Even the diagrams themselves wouldn't come clear, not without a hint as to what the specific purpose was.

Next to the box lay a short tube with a handle: the PAMELA itself. Looking it, McGee failed to be impressed. It simply looked insignificant; which, McGee supposed, would be part of its charm for Commander Graybelle. _Bellagrigio_, McGee reminded himself. The commander had reverted to his childhood name and heritage, instead choosing to follow in his father's footsteps. In fact, at Graybelle's request, one of the henchmen had just completed posting a neat and tidy little sign on the door of the foreman's office of the warehouse letting the warehouse inhabitants know that Enrico Bellagrigio, jr, was the new CEO of the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

_Don't you know that taking over the world is highly overrated? You have to put up with unrest in the Middle East, drug-trafficking warlords, and obstreperous diplomats in every corner of the globe. Me, I'd rather take over a nice cave where no one can find me._

The droning was getting to him. The drone came from the Rube Goldberg device that, every minute, was coming closer and closer to drilling a hole straight through Ducky's chest and into his heart. One inch per hour, that was what Graybelle had said, and it was already closing in on three hours. Another few minutes, and blood would be drawn.

Ducky had closed his eyes, his lips set in a tight line, waiting. There was nothing that the medical examiner could do to alter the course of events, no way to assist McGee in the reconstruction of the PAMELA, no way to avoid the oncoming stake that would pierce his flesh. Blood already soaked the ropes that lashed his wrists to the hard wooden chair from Ducky's attempts to escape.

McGee's hands were shaking. The PAMELA clattered from them, bouncing onto the hard metal surface of the table, clanging and sending shivers of noise throughout the cavernous warehouse where the new leader of THRUSH had set up his lair. All six of the henchmen continued to watch the pair, watching McGee fumble with the weapon that would help them to conquer the world. Two more, McGee knew, were outside standing guard, and he hadn't a clue as to how many more minions Graybelle commanded. 'A lot' would cover it.

"It's all right, Timothy. You are doing your best."

McGee looked up. Ducky was watching him, bright blue eyes now calm and accepting of the outcome. "Ducky, I can't…"

"You're right, Timothy. You can't. No matter what happens, you mustn't. You mustn't allow this madman to have access to his father's invention."

"But, Ducky…" The blade was all but touching the thin clothing that covered Ducky's torso.

"No matter what, Timothy." Ducky closed his eyes resolutely. "No matter what."

A spot of blood soaked the clean white shirt fabric.

Ducky hissed with the sudden pain.


	11. Try Being The Man From UNCLE

"McGee was over here, further away from the bomb," Ziva told Gibbs.

"Not a bomb." Kuryakin was certain. "Not exactly. It was designed to deliver an anesthetic gas, to immobilize any agent on the scene. You remember, Napoleon?"

"How could I forget?" Solo asked wryly. He scratched the back of his head. "It was my first introduction to Dr. Bellagrigio."

"Unfortunately for him, not your last," Kuryakin grunted. "It was _you_ who tussled with him, right before he fell into the vat of the stuff. So why is it that the recent version went after _me_?" he complained.

"What can I say? You're the more devious one."

Gibbs was more interested in recent history, and history that was less devious. "Where was the box, DiNozzo?"

DiNozzo pointed. "Right there, on that coffee table. It had been opened already, but only a few files had been removed. McGee gloved up, took out some papers and handed them to me." He moved in to more closely survey the territory.

Gibbs was at his agent's elbow. DiNozzo had already demonstrated his ability to topple over, getting out of Gibbs's car, and Gibbs wasn't about to chance another spillage and certainly not onto their only crime scene. The only clue to Ducky's whereabouts was to find McGee, and the only way to find McGee was for DiNozzo to remember everything he could about what was missing from this crime scene in Commander Graybelle's apartment. Oh, and finding the abducted Graybelle would be helpful, as well. What did the navy commander have that THRUSH could want?

Ziva moved a pillow on the still upright sofa, mutely inviting DiNozzo to sit for his perusal of the area, more than willing to be the go-fer for her partner. DiNozzo gestured toward a manila file folder on the table, frowning. "There. Over there, on the side table. What's that?"

Ziva fetched the paper that DiNozzo had pointed out, bringing it to him. "Are you sure, Tony?"

DiNozzo flipped open the file folder and scanned the verbiage, trying to puzzle out the words. "Okay, _luce_, that's light, in Italian…"

Ziva, looking over his shoulder, jumped in, translating instantly. "The light proceeds from the _oscillitronico_—I presume in English the word would be something like oscillator—"

"Actually, it's an oscillinator," Kuryakin put in, reading DiNozzo's paper upside-down. "The device is rarely used these days. Never caught on, and with good reason. Go on; read about the entropic vasculation."

Solo too demonstrated his skill: both upside-down and Italian. "The way Bellagrigio was writing, it sounds as though he thought that the entropy was getting in the way of playing tag with the satellite."

"He was quite right," was Kuryakin's opinion. "He never should have tried to go that route in the first place. See, he says it right here: _avere difficoltà con entropia_."

"The _satelliti_ weren't the same," Ziva pointed out. "Technology has come a long way."

"Tell me about it." Solo patted his breast coat pocket. "Do you know long it took me to stop reaching for a pen every time I needed to open Channel D? Who knew that society would adopt a science fiction device over the real thing? I still get chills whenever I see Leonard Nimoy flip open a cell phone."

"Can we get back to this thing?" Gibbs snarled. "DiNozzo, what does it say?"

DiNozzo struggled. "_Il fascio luminoso_…"

Ziva snatched it impatiently from DiNozzo's hand. "_Il fascio luminoso deve colpire esattamente il satellite all'angolo dell'inclinazione corretto_—"

"What the hell does that mean—"

"This is all very interesting," Kuryakin interrupted, "but without the jewel that Bellagrigio used the entire device is useless. May I suggest that we search further for the whereabouts of Dr. Mallard without further ado? I remind you all that I placed the key emerald in his domicile, and of he and his mother, Dr. Mallard is far more likely to recall its whereabouts."

"He's right." Solo looked to Gibbs for inspiration. "Reading about how the PAMELA functions is all very interesting, but the information is some fifty years old. We need data a little more recent. Any recommendations, Agent Gibbs?"

It clicked. It clicked, and they could all see the light bulb flash over Leroy Jethro Gibbs's head.

"What's Italian for gray?"

Ziva stiffened. "_Grigio_."

"As in: Bellagrigio. Beautiful gray."

Solo nodded. "Graybelle. Commander Graybelle; what if he wasn't the innocent bystander we all assumed he was? Good work, Gibbs. Now, where do we find him?" He gestured to the apartment around him. "He's obviously not here, and your people already didn't find him on the Naval base."

"We have to get back to Headquarters," Gibbs told him. "Our databases—"

"We can try ours," Solo interrupted. "Hold on for a moment." He took out his cell phone and pressed a short sequence of buttons. "Open Channel D. Gatsbacher, I need you to run a search." He gave the person on the other end a short summary of the information. "We should get moving. Gatsbacher will call us when the information is available."

* * *

There was more blood, and it was leaking down Ducky's white shirt.

McGee's hands shook.

Ducky was going to die, and McGee was going to watch, knowing that it was all his fault for not being able to rebuild PAMELA.

The drone of the blade couldn't quite overpower the groan that escaped from Dr. Mallard's lips.

* * *

Napoleon Solo glared at his cell phone before tucking it away back into his breast coat pocket. "They're just not researching the way they used to," he complained. "Who would have thought that Gatsbacher would fail? Graybelle has no other lair? Please, be reasonable. The bad guys _always_ had a second lair to fall back to."

"Patience, Napoleon," Kuryakin chided his partner. "Gatsbacher simply hasn't finished scanning the databases. There's a good deal more of them these days, you know."

"And the computers are faster," Solo grumbled, only half under his breath. He tucked himself into Gibbs's car. "It shouldn't make a difference."

Gibbs steered them toward Graybelle's office in the Naval Yard, having no better plan of action and resenting it. DiNozzo could see the thoughts whirling through his boss's head, the eyes dark and brooding and considering where the enemy had taken both his junior agent and his medical examiner. Would Graybelle have left some clue in his office? It wasn't likely. That was a more public place, and more likely for someone—say, a junior officer trying to clean up his boss's desk—to find something that didn't jibe with being an upstanding navy career man. Still, there were precious few places to look, and Graybelle's office was one of those few.

It looked no different, DiNozzo thought, from the first and last time that he'd visited the commander. The place was regulation neat, all the file folders carefully hidden away in drawers, all the correspondence precisely sliced open by some eager young petty officer and placed just so in Graybelle's 'in' box. The 'out' box was already empty, with the petty officer at the desk outside scrambling to retrieve the missives at Gibbs's behest. There was a vanishingly small chance that one of those pieces of outgoing mail would contain the clue that they needed, but Gibbs wasn't about to give up on anything. Not until he had his missing two team members back.

Ziva ruffled through the in box, and Solo perused the papers stacked carefully in a pile on one side of Graybelle's desk. "Nothing here to indicate where he might be," was Solo's grim determination. "How about the files, Illya?"

"If there's something here, I haven't found it. It will take days to go through everything."

Gibbs glared at the computer on Graybelle's desk, the screen dark and brooding, and DiNozzo had no trouble reading the man's mind: the computer whiz kid was one of the people they were searching for. How the hell were they supposed to search the damn thing when McGee was among the missing? It would take days to get an IT geek in to open up the various files and DiNozzo sincerely doubted that either Ducky or McGee had that kind of time to waste.

DiNozzo sympathized with Gibbs. Hell, he did more than sympathize; without McGee, he and Ziva would be reduced to actually trying to make the computer databases back at Headquarters cough up more than a hairball. It wasn't that DiNozzo _couldn't_ use a computer, it was just that McGee was so much _better_ at it than he or Ziva. Hah; the man actually _liked_ that part of the job.

Reason number one to get McGee back: it would look pretty bad on DiNozzo's record to lose another team member. Reason number two: who else could he twit in the office? Ziva? Get real. Reason number three: assign the probie all the scut work—including boring desk and computer stuff—so that DiNozzo could go out into the fresh air. Well, as fresh as the air could be in the heart of downtown Washington.

Gibbs was still staring at the computer, and DiNozzo couldn't help but read his boss's thoughts: did Graybelle leave any clues in there?

DiNozzo offered himself up as the sacrificial lamb before Gibbs could assign him the task. "I can always see if Commander Graybelle put anything into his email," he said. "Like the rest of us, his stuff is locked under a password. Maybe I can get hold of someone in the IT department, get them to open up whatever Graybelle did here." He tapped his own access codes onto the keyboard, and was rewarded by the annoying bell tones announcing that first level awareness had been achieved by the target computer. Step two: dial up the IT help desk.

A charmingly bland series of semi-musical notes seeped out of the headset, and a lovely voice informed him that he was caller number six hundred and ninety two on the waiting list for personal assistance. Would he like to leave a message so that someone could call him back to help? DiNozzo grimaced. "This is going to take a while, boss." _Like we have all the time in the world…_

Kuryakin raised his eyes heavenward, and muttered something under his breath. "May I?" he asked, indicating the chair in front of the computer.

DiNozzo removed himself from the spot of honor. "Be my guest."

Kuryakin stared at the nearly blank screen for a moment, marshalling his thoughts. Then he began to tap on the keyboard with a speed almost worthy of McGee, moving the mouse hither and yon, hitting more beeps than anyone wanted but…

_Ping_.

"In," Kuryakin announced with satisfaction.

Ziva furrowed her brow. "That fast?"

"That fast," Solo assured her with a crooked grin. "Illya has been working with computers since before that Apple fellow was born." He winked. "We may be retired, but that doesn't mean we haven't kept up with a few things…"

Gibbs leaned over Kuryakin's shoulder. "Those emails, to a Dee Worthington. There are about six of them."

"Let's open one."

_Jackpot_. Not one of the group needed to say it, because the information was right there, out in the open for all to see. The four agents from two agencies crowded around the man sitting in front of the computer, drinking in the information contained within the email.

_Dear Commander Graybelle_, the missive read. _I have found three additional facilities for your inspection, all located within one hour's driving distance of D.C. I've attached pictures of the first two; the third has stood vacant for the last eighteen months and is consequentially in poorer repair. I suspect that you'll be able to talk the landlord down to a better monthly rental if the property meets the Navy's needs. Let me know when you'd like to tour any or all of the properties. Dee. _An address and phone numbers followed, indicating that Ms. Worthington was an upstanding and credentialed member of the realtors' association.

"Three places," DiNozzo breathed. "How much you want to bet that the commander is renting one of those places for personal use?"

"Yes, but which one?" Ziva asked. "I believe he is using the third that Ms. Worthington mentioned. It is remote, and not likely to be visited by others."

"We have a problem," Kuryakin broke in. "Look."

The Russian UNCLE agent had opened another of the emails from Ms. Worthington, this one describing her regret that none of the previous facilities had yet met Commander Graybelle's needs and that she would keep looking; here were another three warehouses that might suffice. Email number three contained information of a similar nature.

Eighteen. When all of the emails were opened and read, the final number of warehouses offered up for Commander Graybelle's inspection was eighteen.

Solo put it into words. "It will take a small army to investigate each and every one of these." He grimaced. "UNCLE has exactly two agents stationed here, neither of whom I can call upon at the moment. Each is dealing with his own crisis. What, UNCLE can't have the same economic woes as the rest of the world?" he asked grimly. "Where do you think we get our operating budget from?"

DiNozzo had the answer. "Hang on a sec," he instructed the others, and flipped open his cell phone. "Ms. Worthington? Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS." Pause. "Naval Criminal Investigations, yes, ma'am," he clarified, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "Yes, ma'am, we investigate crimes within the naval services. No, ma'am, you are not suspected of anything; we are merely trying to obtain additional information. Commander Graybelle." He pushed the name into the cell phone. "Yes, ma'am. I understand that you rented a warehouse to him." Pause. _"What?"_ It didn't sound good. "You're sure?" _Definitely_ not good. "Thank you, ma'am," DiNozzo finished up grimly. "Yes, please call me if you hear from him."

"Tony?" Ziva was impatient.

DiNozzo tightened his lips. "Dead end. Graybelle didn't rent any of 'em."

* * *

Had Ducky lost consciousness? McGee sincerely hoped so. Anything to escape the inevitable pain that would accompany the slow drilling of the blade through the medical examiner's heart.

_Will your own autopsy be conducted with as much care and concern for your corpse as you show for others, doctor? Will Jimmy Palmer be invited to stand at your side while you offer him the final lessons of which you are capable? Who will identify the size and shape of the blade that is even now piercing your flesh?_

McGee's hands shook, and it took three tries to persuade the appropriate screw to enter the spot designated for its placement. This wasn't going to do any good; McGee knew that. Without the emerald from the diagram, this whole exercise was useless. The beam of light had to be amplified by that exact jewel in order to reach the power levels necessary to do whatever it was that PAMELAs were supposed to do. McGee could spend all day putting this technological puzzle back together and it still wouldn't function without that jewel.

Then…

"Wait!" McGee ground out. "I know how to make it work!"

Graybelle came alive in a flash. "How?" Around him, his henchmen also came to attention.

McGee straightened. He was playing for Ducky's life. "First, stop that thing." He pointed to the machine slowly grinding the blade into Ducky's chest. "If you kill him, I will never talk." _Scream like a little girl, maybe, if you shove that same blade into my chest as well, but never talk_.

Graybelle gestured to one of his henchmen. The man walked to the contraption with the blade and turned it off; the sudden cessation of the machine drone sounded eerily quiet in the cavernous warehouse.

Ducky never moved. Only the shallow rise and fall of his chest indicated that there was still life within.

McGee pushed. "Get him medical care."

"No." Graybelle had already gone as far as he was going to go. "How will you make my father's device function without the emerald?"

_Give a little, get a little_. McGee was willing to play that game. It was for _very_ high stakes. He took a deep breath.

"By reconfiguring the data elements," he said, hoping that Graybelle would buy it. It was time to use every buzz word in the book to convince the man that McGee's expertise was up to the task. He tried to make it sound good. "The photons were designed to pass through the emerald, altering the wavelengths to the precise emissions needed to significantly enhance the power outflow. Without that exact emerald, the configurations are useless. The whole pattern needs to be reconfigured.

"I can do that," McGee said grimly, hoping that it sounded like a man pushed to admit something that he didn't want to do and less like an NCIS agent lying his fool head off. _Abby, I'm channeling your words right now. Hope this works!_ "I can reconfigure the system so that it uses a different gemstone. But I have to have the different gemstone to work with," he added. "Without that, I can't go forward."

Graybelle advanced on McGee. He tried for intimidation; a difficult task for a short man looking up at the taller NCIS agent. "You can do this?"

"I can do this," McGee lied, "once you get me the gemstone. And it has to be a _large_ one," he added. "At least an inch across in order to fit inside the PAMELA." _Go steal one. It will lead more people back to you_. "But if Dr. Mallard dies," McGee told Graybelle, "I'll have no incentive to fix PAMELA."

* * *

Each of them manned the phones, with the exception of Kuryakin who was down in the Forensics Lab with Abby Sciutto. Solo plunked himself down at McGee's desk to use the spare phone there, and they all dug into the task of determining where Graybelle was hiding. It had been Kuryakin who had pointed out that THRUSH was not well-known for their adherence to the finer points of law, and Commander Graybelle might well have decided to rent a warehouse without going to the trouble of signing a lease or even paying rent. Going to each warehouse in turn was impractically slow, so the agents reached out to the local police for help.

"Office Ziva David, NCIS. I need to reach any officer in the area of Fourth and Walnut. That's right; NCIS. We are looking for a warehouse with suspicious activity. It may involve national security," Ziva said into the phone. "Thank you; I'll wait. Put me through, please, as soon as possible."

One down, seventeen more to go.

"Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, NCIS. Put me through to any patrol officer near Route 541, around where the old industrial park is. Officer Parker? Gibbs, NCIS. Listen, you got any activity around any of the abandoned warehouses in that park? Yeah, I'll hold. Just make it quick. I may have a couple of agents being held hostage in the area. Don't be seen." Pause. "Damn. Thanks."

Two down, sixteen to go.

"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS." DiNozzo looked up in surprise; Napoleon Solo was using his name.

Solo covered the handset with his palm. "You think _NCIS _isn't known? Just try being the Man from UNCLE and see how far it gets you." He uncovered the phone and spoke into it once more. "That's right; DiNozzo," he said smoothly. "I'm looking for any suspicious activity in the warehouse on Vine, just north of Garibaldi. It's a long shot, but we can't afford to ignore any possibility. Yes, I'll wait. Thank you." He frowned as another thought attacked. "Agent Gibbs, your people. Resourceful, I presume."

"Yes." Gibbs tightened his lips.

"Would they try to get out a message somehow?" Solo's attention was distracted by the phone. "Thank you for your help, officer. Get back to me when you have an answer. I'll keep looking."

Three down, fifteen to go.

Gibbs was back to Solo's earlier words. "They would. McGee would call, if he was able. Abby's been trying to get a line on his cell phone, but it hasn't been in use. They probably took it from him."

"It would be surprising if they didn't," Solo agreed. "All right; that's a dead end. How else would Agent McGee try to call for help? How about through a computer? I've been impressed with his expertise; if THRUSH abducted him for something, it could very likely be for his skills. That would correlate with their attempt on Illya. My colleague is likewise good with computers."

"What would that have to do with the PAMELA?" Gibbs argued. "Computers I can buy, but how does that work with that laser thing?"

"Good question," Solo said. "How about we ask someone?"

Instead of a reply, Gibbs dialed a very familiar extension on his phone, putting the call on speaker so that the rest could listen in.

Most phone calls were greeted with a variation on the word 'hello'. Not this one. A blast of something only vaguely akin to music emanated from the speaker, nearly blowing out the phone's innards with the shock and awe.

Gibbs leaned over the speaker, hands covering his ears, and yelled, "turn it down, Abby!"

The voice that floated back with an apology, however, was not perky and female. "Sorry, Agent Gibbs. Ms. Sciutto was sharing some of her collection with me while we work. Do you need her?"

Gibbs never got a chance to answer. Abby pushed in. "Gibbs, you gotta see some of the stuff that Illya has been showing me! Gibbs, it is the coolest, most awesome stuff ever!"

Behind Gibbs's and Solo's backs, DiNozzo and Ziva mouthed to each other, _'Illya'_?

Solo merely lifted his brows and smiled. "We're making precious little progress on locating Agent McGee and Dr. Mallard, and the warehouses themselves are a long shot. We're wondering if there was any way that Agent McGee would attempt to communicate through a computer, and if computers are involved in the restoration of PAMELA."

"Unfortunately, no." That was Kuryakin, handling the last question first. "The PAMELA was invented before computers became quite so commonplace. While it's entirely possible that Dr. Bellagrigio somehow managed to use one to assist with the PAMELA design—and remember, a computer able to do that sort of work back then would have taken up a room the size of the bullpen that you are in—it is much more likely that he worked out the details using paper, pencil, and possibly a slide rule."

"Then there's no chance that they grabbed McGee for his computer skills?" DiNozzo asked.

Kuryakin considered. "No. Not unless they intended a complete redesign of the laser, in which case they'd need a _team_ of experts: a computer specialist to interface, and some experts in physics, specifically in the areas of optics and laser technology."

"Gibbs, that may be what Commander Graybelle wants from McGee," Abby broke in. "Graybelle's not a scientist. He's like a lot of other guys who think that all science is alike. If you have some knowledge of one branch, you must know them all, which is a load of garbage."

"The commander doesn't want a complete redesign of PAMELA," Solo mused, stroking his chin. "All he wants is for it to work."

"Which means that he wants the missing emerald," Gibbs nodded. "Or something equivalent."

"There _is_ no equivalent, Agent Gibbs," Kuryakin put in testily over the phone. "Without the emerald, the PAMELA is just so much worthless pins and needles."

"Unless you redesign the capacitor influx," Abby said suddenly.

"What?" That took Kuryakin aback. They could hear it in his voice.

"The capacitor influx valve. It's designed to shoot photons at the emerald. What if you replaced just that piece? Reconfigured it?"

The silence emanating from the Forensics Lab gave them all a sinking feeling that Gibbs's lab rat had just hit on something vitally important.

"You may be right, Abby," Kuryakin said slowly. "Would Agent McGee be able to do that?"

"Not a chance," Abby told him. "McGee's a genius with computers, but I think he flunked bicycle mechanics as a Boy Scout. Give him a screw driver, and he's just as likely to accidentally stab you in the eye."

"Would Graybelle know that?" Gibbs asked.

"Not unless somebody told him," Abby said.

"Not unless somebody he _trusted_ told him," DiNozzo corrected. "Graybelle could think that everyone else was lying to protect the world."

"Which we would," Solo put in. "The question is: what do we do about it?"

"No. The question is: how do we find McGee and Ducky?" Gibbs told them all. "The cell phone is out. Computer communication stuff is out. What do we have left?"

Gibbs and Solo had the same light bulb flash at the same time:

"The emerald."

* * *

Commander Graybelle marched up to McGee. "Here." He held out his hand.

McGee automatically reached for what Graybelle was offering. It was a large gemstone, clear and sparkling, almost half an inch across the face. Even in the dim light of the warehouse that Graybelle had stashed them in, the faces of the gem twinkled and spat back tiny shafts of light rocketed through the facets.

Yet there was something odd about it. McGee didn't consider himself to be anything close to an expert but he'd gone through the mandatory lectures on gemstones and other valuable items that crooks sometimes tried to use to launder and transport money across national borders. For a diamond, it was astonishingly big. Not that there weren't diamonds this big, but the larger ones tended to be pretty well guarded. For Graybelle to casually waltz in and steal one..

"Where did you get this?" The moment he opened his mouth, McGee could have kicked himself.

Graybelle glowered. "You have your gemstone," he snapped back. "Now make my father's invention work!"

"Right." McGee carefully turned back to the device half-apart on the table in front of him, avoiding the vision of Dr. Mallard tied to a chair, a stake driven into his chest. McGee didn't need a second look to know that the medical examiner had passed out, that the man's chin was drooping onto his collar bone and that the dark pool dripping down from one chair leg was from congealing blood.

_Hang on, Ducky. I'm doing the best I can. Maybe Gibbs will come across this crime where Graybelle's people stole this diamond. A jewel this large has to have been guarded. That will lead Gibbs to us._

Would it be in time? McGee had never wished so hard for something in his life.

He picked up the piece of the PAMELA that had brackets for securing the jewel in place.

His hand shook.


	12. One Distraction, On Request

"Never knew there were so many robberies in the D.C. area in a day," DiNozzo muttered under his breath.

It was a lie, of course. There was a time that Officer Anthony DiNozzo, of the Baltimore police force, could quote crime statistics of both Baltimore and D.C. The two cities were so close that the dividing line was more of a suggestion than a border, and the two police departments swapped information faster than neighbors swapped gossip. DiNozzo had lost track of the exact figures when he'd joined NCIS but that didn't mean that he'd forgotten everything. There hadn't been any uptick in the quantity of crimes in the area, and certainly not with respect to jewelry.

He scanned the computer screen, knowing that the others were doing the same, looking for a report of someone stealing a large emerald. It would have to be pretty large, Abby had told them. Too small, and it wouldn't fit inside the PAMELA. The beam of light that was supposed to be amplified would spill over the edges and screw up the whole thing, and wouldn't that be just too bad?

Jewelry heist, Sixth and Main, T.S. Roberts Jewelers. Three suspects entered at approximately two fifty-three in the afternoon—pretty specific for an approximation—and held up the store at gunpoint. They got a lot of stuff, including a bunch of wedding rings, three necklaces with diamonds, tourmalines, and rubies, and a bunch of pearl strands. Bunch of high end watches, too; DiNozzo was hoping to win the lottery some day so that he could afford on his cop's salary to buy something that classy for his wrist. He urged the computer to show him pictures of the booty and sighed. There were a lot of gems on those necklaces but unless someone glued them together, they weren't going to be large enough to fit the bill. He moved on to the next.

"This isn't working." Gibbs slammed his fist onto the desk. "Dammit, we need to find them!" He half-rose from his chair. "Get your gear, people. We are going to visit every damn one of those warehouses…" He trailed off, thinking furiously.

Even Solo knew something had hit. "Agent Gibbs?"

"He didn't steal anything," Gibbs said into the air. "He didn't _steal_ anything! He _bought_ the damn thing! What does he care about paying the bill? He thinks he can own the world!" He slapped the phone. "Abby, get up here now!"

They started with the warehouses closest to the naval yard, hoping that Graybelle hadn't wanted to travel back and forth from his lair. From there, Abby and Illya, working together to meld both NCIS and UNCLE databases, pulled up information about businesses in the areas, targeting all of the jewelry stores so that the others could call to ask about recent purchases. It was slow going, but it was a lead.

"Yes, this is Officer Ziva David, of NCIS. I am calling to find out if you sold any large gemstones within the last forty eight hours…"

"DiNozzo, NCIS. Listen, I'm trying to track down a large purchase…"

"NCIS. Special Agent Gibbs. Gimme the manager…"

"Try this one, Napoleon. This zip code has no fewer than three jewelers in it."

Solo snorted. "And not one of those stores carries anything larger than a few links of gold chain. Too low end, even for D.C. Try again, Illya."

"Spoilsport."

"Just a realist, my friend. Just a realist."

"Wait a minute." DiNozzo rose from his chair to look at the map that Abby had plastered onto the plasma screen in the bullpen. He pointed. "What's this?"

Solo didn't give it a second glance. "Not a jeweler's, Agent DiNozzo. What makes you think that they'd have a large gemstone?"

DiNozzo peered more closely. "It's not a jeweler's, but it is a shop for hobbyists."

Ziva raised her eyebrows. "So?"

"Hobbies. Like jewelry making." DiNozzo picked up the phone.

Kuryakin frowned. "Hobbyists only rarely indulge in the use of expensive gems, Agent DiNozzo. A shop such as that isn't likely to carry large emeralds."

It didn't matter. DiNozzo had already dialed, and was waiting impatiently for a clerk to pick up the phone. The others held their breath. DiNozzo's hunch shouldn't be the answer, and everyone of the people there hoped that it would.

"Special Agent DiNozzo, NCIS. I'm working a case in the area," he told the person on the other end, keeping an awesomely casual tone to his words that was worthy of Napoleon Solo. "In the last couple of days, has anyone come in and bought a large rock? Maybe an emerald, something like that?

"You don't carry emeralds?

"Only quartz? Yeah, I don't think quartz is what—what did you say?"

The others tensed.

"How big?

"Tell me again, in inches.

"Right size," DiNozzo told the handset uncertainly. "Looked like a diamond, you said?"

Abby started waving her arms and nodding frantically.

"Yeah, that might work. Was it polished?" DiNozzo asked, prodded by the note that Kuryakin held up for DiNozzo to read. DiNozzo covered the handset. "Yeah, it was polished. But it was clear, like a diamond."

"That doesn't matter, Tony!" Abby could barely keep still. "All PAMELA needs is a gem to focus the rays. It doesn't matter what kind, not if McGee is gonna reset the calibration. Not that he knows how, not really, but he could probably figure it out in a couple of months or so—"

Gibbs cut to the chase, moving back to the map on the plasma screen. "Where? Where's the closest warehouse to this store that Graybelle looked at?"

Abby hit the keyboard, and a red spot lit up like a beacon. "Here."

Three NCIS agents and two UNCLE agents hit the exit running.

* * *

_How the heck do you calibrate an unknown device to respond to the prism effects of a diamond when it was designed to work with an emerald?_ McGee had had the basic optical physics courses during undergrad, but there was a big difference between undergrad physics and real life experimentation, even if that original experiment had taken place some fifty years ago. McGee was entirely out of his element.

_Gotta make it look good. Ducky's life is in your hands_. McGee twisted the screwdriver, tightening the brackets that held Graybelle's diamond in place. _If Graybelle suspects that I can't do this, we're both toast. _The PAMELA was now back together, piece by piece, though McGee hadn't a clue as to whether the thing would function or splutter at him or even just sit there and do nothing. Doing nothing was the most likely outcome, he thought, and the most likely scenario to discourage Graybelle. It would likely discourage Graybelle into killing McGee, and Ducky along with him.

_Wait a minute; gotta give PAMELA some juice somehow_. McGee peered at the diagrams. Maybe he couldn't read Italian, but he could still see where the battery sat and how the electrons and photons flowed when the original Professor Bellagrigio had wanted to conquer the world. If nothing else, the re-powering of the battery pack would buy him more time.

McGee looked up at Graybelle. The commander was watching him like a hawk and had been for the last three hours, eyes devouring every move that McGee made. McGee opened his mouth. "I need to plug this in," he said to Graybelle. "It needs a source of energy. I don't suppose you have an extension cord lying around." _Who am I kidding? Nobody ever has an extension cord when you need it_. McGee mentally congratulated himself on a devious and successful ploy to stall for time…

"Adams. Get the extension cord from my office. The long one. Actually, get both of them. It's a long way from this table to the nearest outlet." Graybelle caressed the harsh metal of the PAMELA. "Soon, my darling. Soon."

Crap.

* * *

They re-grouped in one dark corner just outside of the lot containing the target warehouse. The lot was huge by D.C. standards, but since they were well outside the urban sprawl, no one thought much of it. Several trees, crooked from lack of adequate soil nutrition, fought with clumps of grass and weeds for access to prime location that hadn't been tamped down by decades of heavy trucks rolling up to the warehouse within. The chain link fence that encircled the lot was reinforced by overgrown thorn bushes, and did an effective job of discouraging intruders. The massive gate was the only reasonable entryway, unless parachuting down from the sky was an option.

The central building itself was huge, large enough to hide a jumbo jet within. A large rust spot on one edge of the roof had given in to the chemistry of nature, the metal jagged and open and allowing access to any small sparrow that cared to build a nest inside to protect its fledglings from rain and from the roving eyes of the hawks swirling in lazy circles overhead. To the casual eye, the place looked deserted.

The five agents possessed anything but casual eyes. Each one wore a frown.

"I counted ten men toward the front right, just inside the side door," DiNozzo reported.

"The entrance is guarded by another three," was Kuryakin's contribution.

"Six in back," said Ziva.

"Four more to the left," Gibbs growled. "Where the hell did he get all of those people?"

"It's one of the great mysteries of life," Solo informed him. "THRUSH always manages to have an apple supply of henchmen, and more." Solo sniffed. "Commander Graybelle can't afford to purchase a large emerald, but he's hired more than twenty men to fetch for him. Find an answer to that question, Agent Gibbs, and they'll make you head of UNCLE."

"It's a promotion I can do without," Gibbs informed him curtly. "Anybody see McGee or Ducky?"

"There's a smaller group inside, in the center of the building, but the window was too dirty to make any positive identification," Solo said. "Given, however, that they appeared to be huddled around a table with something on it, I'll willing to take it as a working hypothesis that this is our location." He cocked his head. "We're outnumbered some four to one, Agent Gibbs, and cover inside is preciously small. Do you have any suggestions?"

Gibbs didn't move toward his handgun. "SWAT is on its way."

"How long before they arrive? This is some distance from D.C. Do you intend to wait?"

The tightening of his lips had nothing to do with humor. "We'll start by taking down some of these people outside," Gibbs said.

"I volunteer," Ziva piped up.

"Allow me to assist you, my dear," Kuryakin said. "I feel I owe you something for my behavior in the hospital."

"It will be my pleasure—"

"DiNozzo, you're on my six. We'll take the left. Ziva, Kuryakin, you'll move around to the right." Gibbs had planned more of these missions than he could remember. "Solo, you stay here and make sure that nobody escapes through the front. If SWAT shows up—and they've been instructed to come in on foot, without noise—have 'em wait with you until we have a better handle on things. Everyone clear?"

A group nod. Tension rose.

Gibbs wasn't finished. "We're going to need a distraction to get to the group in the middle of the warehouse. Without that, Ducky and McGee are finished; we'll never have time to take down the remainder of Graybelle's men before they kill them. Solo, that's your job. When I give the signal, I want something loud that will draw as many people as possible to the front of the warehouse and away from Ducky and McGee. You can handle that?"

Solo gave a small smile. "One distraction, coming up on request." He cast a glance toward Kuryakin. "It seems to me that we used a similar ploy on Dr. Bellagrigio, many years ago. If it worked on the father, hopefully it will have equally good results on the son."

Kuryakin sniffed. "And _I_ recall that you talked equally as much before the distraction, Napoleon. Can we proceed with the mission, or must you continue to babble incessantly?"

Solo raised his eyes heavenward. "Illya was touchy back then, too," he confided to Gibbs.

Gibbs declined to acknowledge either one. "Move out," was all he said.

* * *

It wasn't as though McGee had many options to choose from. There were only just so many things that he could do when surrounded by a group of people intent on taking over the world by restoring a fifty year old weapon to lethal integrity. McGee _could_ turn the screwdriver that reattached the oscillinator to the barrel of the photonic concentrator. He _couldn't_ sit down at a computer to finish chapter seventeen where Special Agent Tibbs was trying to figure out who put the dill pickle into the barrel with the sweet gherkins, nor could the Elf Lord finish off Winter Wizard online. McGee _really_ wished that he could get online, even as the Elf Lord. The Elf Lord could go seek out the Forensic Fairy and tell Abby what was going on.

Not happening. Graybelle wasn't about to let McGee near anything with even a remote connection to the internet. No, McGee was on his own at the moment.

Truly on his own; McGee snuck a peek at his fellow NCIS team member. Ducky sat tied to his chair, the blade pinning him in place, his head lolling unconsciously on his chest. The medical examiner was still breathing, though, and McGee wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. Graybelle would be very happy to torture Ducky even more to try to get McGee to perform a few more miracles with PAMELA. Blood had dried on the man's shirt, and McGee carefully shifted his gaze away before the sight caused him to upchuck all over PAMELA. _Wouldn't that make Graybelle angry?_

Graybelle noticed McGee's hesitation. "Faster," he demanded.

"I'm going as fast as I can," McGee lied.

"What do you have left to do?"

"Lots of stuff." That part wasn't a lie. "I still need to test the power source. I need to calibrate the angle of photon entry into the new diamond that you got. I need to recalibrate the settings to compensate for the fact that it's a diamond and not an emerald—"

"Enough." Graybelle cut him off with a wave of his hand. "We're turning it on now."

Uh, that wasn't in McGee's plan. Worse, if PAMELA did something that looked promising, Graybelle might think that he could use it right now. Even worse than that, McGee wasn't about to swear that success wasn't going to be the case. What if the damn thing really did work after all of these years, with a new gem to act as the lens?

McGee tried to think fast. "Uh…you can't."

_Oh, that was brilliant, McGee. What are you going to say for an encore?_

Graybelle halted. "Why not?"

"Uh…"

Graybelle saw through him. He hadn't made it to commander in the navy by failing to read the thoughts of those that he outranked, and those who outranked him. Graybelle turned to the man standing to one side of the table, nearest to the power switch. "Turn it on," he ordered.

If this were really one of DiNozzo's B movies, there ought to have been an entire bank of computer lights flickering and flashing to one side. There should be a Jacob's Ladder, with electricity darting from one pole to the other, snapping and crackling with restrained power. The process of turning PAMELA on should have needed a minimum of three men, all dressed in stained white lab coats, giggling maniacally to themselves, instead of a single man turning a single switch…

Well, Graybelle seemed ready to burst into maniacal laughter, as soon as PAMELA demonstrated that there was something worth laughing about.

One of the henchmen flipped the switch. Several things happened sequentially.

Power flowed into PAMELA. McGee could tell that it was happening because a) the voltmeter that he'd hooked up to PAMELA said so and b) PAMELA started to hum. She also started to shake.

The voltmeter shattered.

"Turn it off!" McGee yelled. "Too much—"

_**power**_

A bright white light shot out of PAMELA's barrel. It required less than half a second to bore through three discarded crates on the opposite side of the warehouse. The remainder of the half second was used up by piercing the metal wall of the warehouse and disappearing into the Great Beyond.

_I hope there are no low-flying planes nearby_.

The shaking increased—fast. McGee had just enough time to see the smile on Graybelle's face broaden into an outright grin before PAMELA's hum turned into an hysterical screeching of electronics. McGee knew what was going to happen next. He turned away in a vain attempt at cover—

PAMELA exploded.

A sonic _boom_, and that was the least of anyone's worries.

McGee dove toward Ducky, an inherently incoherent attempt at protecting the medical examiner from the flying shrapnel driving him. The explosion behind him helped McGee to become airborne, and propelled him even faster toward Ducky. Something bit his leg, and something nastier stabbed him in the back. _At least it didn't get through me, and into Ducky…_

_

* * *

_

The plan went to hell in a handbasket.

Solo was supposed to provide a distraction upon Gibbs's signal. Since the distraction happened well before Gibbs had dropped more than two of the six he'd intended and before he'd even heard from Ziva and Kuryakin that they'd done their share, he could only assume that the distraction hadn't come from Solo.

That the noise came from within tended to bolster that supposition, as did the fierce white light that boiled out through the wall of the warehouse not six inches in front of Gibbs's nose.

All hell broke loose.

Not a problem. Gibbs was used to the plan not surviving the first encounter with the enemy, and he was fairly certain that Solo and Kuryakin had the same expectations.

The white light suddenly cut out, concurrent with the explosion within. It wasn't hard to decipher what had happened: somebody had tried to get PAMELA to work, and she had reacted in a satisfyingly unsatisfactory fashion. It was a pretty good bet that no one would have to worry about PAMELA taking over the world for the next twenty four hours. Not with that kind of explosion. That was the sound of someone's dream shattering.

There were some other dreams that needed shattering; actually, they were nightmares. One of the nightmares was a life without a certain medical examiner. Another was explaining to a certain family how very proud NCIS was of Special Agent Timothy McGee's giving his life for his country.

Not if Gibbs had anything to say about it.

No door. No problem: the white light had drilled a large enough hole that Gibbs felt shoving away the rest of the metal wall alongside would be the fastest way inside. He did just that, shoulder-rolling his way in with DiNozzo barreling in after him.

More than two dozen henchmen, and four more flat on their backs around what used to be a fine example of a metal work table. The four on their backs Gibbs could ignore; they weren't getting up any time soon.

The rest were a problem.

Gibbs ducked behind a wooden crate, feeling as much as hearing the slug aimed for his head dig into the wood. He darted around to fire off a return shot, warning them to keep their distance. Beside him, DiNozzo aimed and fired. "Hah. One down."

"Another twenty to go, DiNozzo," Gibbs reminded him. "Keep 'em away from McGee and Ducky."

"Right." DiNozzo fired again, dissuading someone from advancing on the two. "Where are the others?"

"There." Gibbs pointed.

Ziva did something with her hands near one henchman's neck. The henchman dropped to the cold concrete floor. Ziva moved on.

Not to be outdone, Kuryakin performed the same maneuver, pulling the man back out of the way of the shower of bullets that another henchman tried to aim in his direction. Gibbs grunted, and aimed.

The shower of bullets stopped. Kuryakin took a moment for a quick wave of encouragement.

Still too many of them, and too few agents. Gibbs and the others had to get to Ducky and McGee before a stray bullet ended their lives forever. Even as Gibbs watched, a slug ricocheted off of the concrete floor not three inches from McGee's head, leaving only a small gray divot behind. DiNozzo got the one that fired, but there would be more.

Too many henchmen. Gibbs moved to a closer crate, still too far away by several yards. He needed more men; where was Solo? Where was the SWAT team, supposed to be here already? Too many henchmen to save his people.

There it was: a snub-nosed handgun poking out from behind a crate, aimed directly at Ducky's head. The body holding the gun was completely hidden by the crate, and there was no way for Gibbs to stop what was about to happen. Gibbs could shred the wood of the crate with bullets from his own gun, and it would still take too long. Ducky would be dead. DiNozzo: same position. Ziva and Kuryakin, still taking down henchmen on the other side of the warehouse. Too far away.

He had to try. Gibbs had to try to prevent the inevitable. He fired, watching the splinters of wood chip away from the edge of the crate. He watched the snubnose take aim at the head of his friend.

_Crack._

The henchman flopped out onto the floor, handgun skittering away from his hand. Gibbs stared. It hadn't been his bullet, nor one from DiNozzo's gun.

Napoleon Solo stepped out from behind the crate. He blew artistically across the top of his handgun.

He shrugged. "We'd have a devil of a time deciding which name to put on the headstone."


	13. I Recall It In Excrutiating Detail

He was done. Finished. There wasn't anything else that Special Agent Timothy McGee was capable of doing right now except lying on the cold concrete floor. Maybe he could bleed a little faster, but that was about it. Graybelle had won.

Maybe not. The last thing McGee remembered was the diamond shattering into little bitty pieces. Those little bitty pieces had flown through the air like itsy bitsy missiles, and McGee had tried to make sure that Ducky was protected from the barrage.

Stupid thing to do. Ducky was already a dead man, as was McGee himself. What was McGee trying to save him for? More torture, when Graybelle wanted PAMELA restored one more time with yet another gemstone? Why couldn't PAMELA have shattered along with the diamond?

On the other hand, if McGee was dead, why did he hurt so much?

"Don't try to move, McGee. I'm going to turn you over."

That was Tony. What was he doing here? Strong hands grabbed McGee's shoulders, gently easing him onto his back. Fire flared—

"C'mon, McGee, say something."

He felt fingers at his neck, searching for a pulse. He swallowed hard. "Tony…"

"Wrap this around his leg." Ziva's voice; McGee would know her dulcet tones anywhere. He tried to keep the moan inside where it belonged when someone—vision still wasn't working particularly well—applied a dressing to the small volcano erupting from his calf. The moan seeped out anyway.

"Watch out. He's going under."

That cliché, McGee decided muzzily, was going to be _particularly_ well-written and fleshed out when he returned to Chapter Seventeen.

* * *

"What the hell—?" Gibbs came to a halt in front of Ducky.

It looked something out of a Fifties's science fiction movie—one badly done, with ray guns and walking latex blobs intent on destroying things for no apparent reason. It was a contraption of wires and cogs and rotating parts. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been for the shaft of steel impaling Dr. Mallard's chest.

Solo moved up beside him. "I remember this."

Gibbs didn't really care what Solo remembered. His medical examiner was an inch away from death, and Gibbs wanted it fixed five minutes ago.

Solo understood. "Dr. Bellagrigio did the same thing to Illya."

Right. That was when both Kuryakin and Ducky were several decades younger and better able to heal.

Solo leaned over to inspect the wound, trying to see beyond the blood. "I don't think it's penetrated the heart. Not yet, anyway." He straightened. "I suggest that we not let anyone restart this thing." He indicated the device that had pushed the blade through Ducky's skin. "I hope Dr. Mallard's tetanus shots are up to date. This thing looks a good deal rustier than when I last saw it."

Kuryakin too glowered when he saw the contraption. "It is. I hope you don't intend doing what you did the last time, Napoleon."

"What did he do?"

"He pulled it out of me." Kuryakin winced at the memory. "On the spot."

Solo lifted his eyebrows. "What did you expect me to do? Leave you there? I needed you to work the controls so that PAMELA didn't blow up the world. I dragged you to the control panel, if you recall."

"I recall it in excruciating detail, thank you very much, Napoleon." Kuryakin turned to Gibbs. "Unfortunately, I don't see a better option, Agent Gibbs. If we leave him here, he will die. If we try to move him without extracting the blade, the metal edge will extend the injury further, and he will bleed to death. If he is lucky, the blade will advance further into the chest cavity and he will bleed faster; death will be almost instantaneous." Kuryakin paused. "He is unconscious at the moment; I do not recommend waiting. As I remember, the pain was not pleasant."

Solo pulled out a fine linen handkerchief. "We'll need to apply pressure to the wound, as soon as the blade is out." He caught Kuryakin's eye. "No, Illya, this is a much newer handkerchief. We don't need _that_ many memories." He handed the cloth over to Gibbs. "You see to the wound. As soon as the blade is out, Illya and I will cut through the ropes. Make sure that you don't lose hold of the wound, Agent Gibbs."

"I won't." Gibbs folded the cloth into a neat square.

Solo moved around to examine the device hold the blade in place. "I'm trying remember how I did this the last time," he complained. "There was a lever that retracted the blade."

"Yes, and you nearly reversed the direction and stuck it through my heart," Kuryakin reminded him. "_Do_ see if you can do a bit better this time, Napoleon." He slipped behind Ducky, raising the medical examiner's chin up and out of the way. It looked eerie, like identical twins.

"Ready?" Solo located the lever.

_Ready to see his friend bleed out in a matter of seconds? Sure_. Gibbs held the cloth in his hand.

"On the count of three. One, two, three—"

Yank.

Blade back, slipping out of damaged flesh.

Gibbs slapped his hand with the makeshift bandage against Ducky's chest.

It took a long moment, but…

"He's still breathing."

* * *

_Ummmm. Nice…._

Drugs. Had to be drugs. He was in a hell of a lot of pain, but it just didn't seem to matter.

Voices floated over his head.

"Where the hell is it?"

"Graybelle must have snatched it up as he fled. We found traces of the quartz crystal on the floor but no evidence of the PAMELA. Even the diagrams are missing."

"Like father, like son." That voice was less familiar, and McGee struggled to identify it. Oh, right: Napoleon Solo. "I remember that the diagrams disappeared when Illya and I foiled Dr. Bellagrigio's plot. We were able to hang onto the PAMELA itself, and we assumed—incorrectly, as it appears—that the plans were destroyed in the resulting fire."

"Yeah, well, now Graybelle has both the plans and the ray gun." Okay, Gibbs was pissed. McGee would have cared, but for the pleasant state the narcotics had him in.

Narcotics. Hah; that meant he was in a hospital, and glad of it. It meant that Gibbs was once again running things, and that the worst that McGee had to look forward to was a head slap. Granted, that was enough to rattle his brains, but it seemed a lot preferable to whatever it was that had gone on before.

McGee struggled to remember—Ducky! Was Ducky still alive?

"Yeah, he is, McGee." That was said quietly into his ear, which is how McGee realized that he'd spoken his fear aloud. "You're in the same hospital that he is. You're gonna be okay."

"Ask him about the PAMELA." It sounded like Ducky, so it had to be Kuryakin. McGee realized that his thoughts were becoming clearer.

McGee decided that he really didn't need prompting. He levered open his eyes, wishing that there weren't suddenly two Gibbs's, two Solo's, two Kuryakin's, but four DiNozzo's. All of the DiNozzo's were leering at him in a way that McGee found most disturbing. He took a deep breath. "It didn't work."

"We'd gathered that, Agent McGee," Solo said. "Can you be a bit more specific?"

McGee swallowed. His mouth was horribly dry, as though all of Graybelle's henchmen had marched through and dumped a load of sand on their way.

Gibbs held a straw to his lips, taking it away before McGee had even half slaked his thirst. "Not too much, they said," he cautioned. "Go too fast, and you'll lose it. The docs just finished digging the shrapnel out of your back and leg. They'll spring you in a couple of hours, once the anesthesia's out of your system."

_Shrapnel? Oh, yeah. The diamond shattered_.

"Not a diamond, McGee," Gibbs told him.

_Did I actually say something, and not just think it?_

"Yes, McSnore, you're higher than a kite in a hurricane," DiNozzo informed him. "You're going to tell me all of your Elf Lord secrets next."

Gibbs cut in. "It wasn't a diamond, McGee. It was a quartz crystal, and a cheap one at that."

"Which is why it shattered," Kuryakin said, slipping into a lecturing tone that sounded astonishingly like that of his doppelganger. "The PAMELA requires a higher grade of gemstone, one less likely to break under the strain, in order to function in the manner that it was designed. I'm amazed that you were able to get it to work as well as you did, Agent McGee. It was rather impressive, right up until the quartz shattered."

Gibbs dragged McGee's attention back to the matter at hand. "What did you see, McGee, right after the explosion? You see if Graybelle took it?"

McGee winced; the drugs, unfortunately, were wearing off. "All I saw was the thing about to explode. I turned my back."

"Which is how the shrapnel ended up in your back and not in your eyes." Solo wasn't displeased with the trade-off. He turned to Gibbs. "It seems, Agent Gibbs, that we still need to find the missing emerald."

* * *

Abby didn't budge when Gibbs entered the room, followed by DiNozzo and the two UNCLE agents. She remained seated in the uncomfortable plastic chair, stationed by the bedside, her hand slipped into Ducky's. She wasn't letting go.

Neither did Ziva move from her spot, perched restlessly in one corner of the room where she could scan everything. Dark eyes looked out through the window for the glint of a sniper's scope, through the open door in case an unfamiliar face walked by, and every beep of every monitor added just that little bit more tension to the set of her shoulders.

Gibbs wasn't going to object, not until his medical examiner opened his eyes and informed Leroy Jethro Gibbs that the danger was past. "Anything?" _Has he stirred at all?_

Abby tightened her lips. "Not a thing, Gibbs. He hasn't even come close to waking up."

"He's a sick man, Ms. Sciutto," Solo said gently. Gibbs sighed; Abby knew that already, didn't need to be reminded of it—it wasn't a reminder. It was a statement of fact. It was permission for the tear to creep out of one corner of her eye and smear her dark eye-liner even more than it already was.

Gibbs didn't need the facts any more than Abby did. He didn't need to know that the man was burning up with fever, that the antibiotics that they were pumping inside hadn't yet done a good enough job. He didn't need to think about the surgeons carefully cleaning out the wound that Graybelle had caused, removing small shreds of rusty metal and sluicing out the dirt left behind with sterile saline before covering the area with a pristine white bandage.

_The bruises tell my story, Jethro, if you'll only take the time to look. You and Mr. Solo cut the bindings from my wrists to release me from the chair; I've bloody markings from where the ropes rubbed into my flesh. There are similar markings on my ankles, or don't you remember your knife slicing through those ties as well? The extra rope 'round my waist; well, that's a bit more difficult to discern. My clothing softened the bite of that one. Mr. Palmer might miss the evidence, though I certainly should not. And what would you make of my bloody lips? Would you realize that I bit through them when Commander Graybelle inflicted his infernal device upon me?_

_I suspect you would._

"They'll be coming after him, Gibbs," Solo remarked. "By now, Graybelle understands that in order to use the PAMELA, he'll need to have the emerald in his possession. He tried with another stone and failed. He'll want the emerald."

Kuryakin nodded, staring at the unconscious man who wore his face. "Where have you put it, Dr. Mallard? I'm certain that until now, you never knew its history."

"Could Mrs. Mallard have put it somewhere and forgotten it?" Ziva asked.

"It's as good an explanation as any," Gibbs sighed.

Kuryakin disagreed. "I looked all through the house, Agent Gibbs, and haven't been able to find it. I went over the place inch by inch."

"Did you ask Mrs. Mallard about it?" DiNozzo asked.

Kuryakin winced. "I did. She hit me with her cane, insisting that I'd stolen it from her."

That struck a chord for Gibbs. "But she _did_ recognize your description."

"As much as she was able," Kuryakin admitted. "I cannot advise any high degree of accuracy in the lady."

"Still…" Gibbs mused.

Solo took note. "A long shot, Gibbs. Illya already looked for it, and so have the rest of us." He indicated the man in the bed. "Our best bet is to wait for Dr. Mallard to wake up. And protect him from anyone trying to get at him," he added hastily.

Solo was right. Gibbs frowned, seeing the slight rise and fall of Ducky's chest, the only thing that indicated that life remained in the man. That, and the little green dot that bounced up and down on the monitor high above the man's head—wasn't it supposed to beat in a regular pattern? It didn't seem particularly regular to Gibbs, not that he knew what he was looking at.

Medical stuff; that's why he had Ducky here in this hospital. Bodyguard stuff: that's why he was going to sit here all night, along with Abby, watching Ducky breathe in and out. It was why he was going to have Ziva prowl the hallways outside of Ducky's room. It was why Solo and Kuryakin had volunteered to walk the perimeter of the hospital, looking for assailants who might be tempted to attack a man who looked like their target. It was why there was a squad of bodyguards on their way here, ready to look after one of their own.

DiNozzo he'd assign to bring back a few gallons of caffeine, right after he took McGee home. They were discharging the junior NCIS agent from medical care in another hour. Gibbs didn't think it was an especially good idea—kicking 'em out too soon these days, but nobody'd asked his opinion—so he instructed DiNozzo to take the man home and tuck him into bed. Nobody _else_ would get any sleep tonight, not until Ducky woke up and told them where the damn emerald was.

* * *

"Nope," DiNozzo said cheerfully.

McGee begged his eyes to reopen. It was tough; he'd much rather simply sit there, strapped in by a seat belt that he hadn't been able to persuade his fingers to manipulate, and snooze. It had been embarrassing; he'd needed two nurses' help simply to transfer from the hospital stretcher into the wheelchair for the trip out to DiNozzo's car, and because of that the nurse—where had the other one gone? McGee would have liked to get to know her better—the nurse who was left had insisted that DiNozzo get out from behind the wheel in order to help get him up from the chair and into DiNozzo's car.

DiNozzo had snickered all the way through the maneuver, and even more when McGee's knees threatened to dump him onto the ground.

At least he hadn't laughed when the nurse—Lisa, that was her name. McGee resolved to remember it so he could come back to thank her, and get her phone number—had leaned across him to fasten the seatbelt. There wasn't much that McGee was capable of doing at the moment, but remembering the clean scent of Lisa's hair as she reached across him was one of them. _Dammit, I'm a healthy male in the prime of life! Well, maybe not so healthy at the moment, but healthy enough to appreciate…_

"Huh?"

"Nope," DiNozzo repeated. "We're not going straight home. Your place, I mean," he clarified. "Not straight to your place."

McGee didn't need his eyes to talk; he only needed his mouth and a couple of vocal cords. McGee decided to let his eyes have their way and stay closed until further notice. "Why not?"

"Because I thought of something."

That was frightening, and McGee said so.

"Hah, hah." DiNozzo negotiated a right hand turn that left McGee's innards in the car behind them and the pedestrian shaking his fist. "I think I know where the emerald is."

"You do?" Again, a request for his eyes to open. _Request denied_. "Where?"

"Ducky's place."

_Okay, eyes, you were right. No need to open_. McGee sighed. "Tony, we've been through there, over and over. Solo and Kuryakin have been through the house, and so have Ziva and Gibbs. Where haven't we looked?"

"How much you want to bet that Mrs. Mallard has some secret hiding places?" DiNozzo asked, still entirely too cheerful for McGee's tastes.

"How much you want to bet that Gibbs already found them?" McGee shot back. "Tony, I'm _tired_. Drive me home first, then go and search Ducky's place if you must."

"It won't take more than a minute," DiNozzo told him, still cheerful and still in charge of driving, "and it's on the way. Besides, I need a distraction for the old lady."

"It is not on the way. And what about her dogs? You can't expect me to distract them."

"Them, too," DiNozzo admitted. "You keep track of the little monsters, and I'll search for a secret hiding place. We'll be done in a jiffy. Who knows, maybe I'll even find the damn stone, and this case will be over. Wouldn't you like that, McGee? Gibbs would."

"Isn't that seaman still there, the one that Gibbs grabbed from me to watch Mrs. Mallard?" McGee remembered the scene: Gibbs asked, and McGee instantly offered up more than one of the little clerical terrors for the task. After all, it wasn't as if they were all that much help in entering the data that McGee needed…

"Yeah." That dimmed DiNozzo's enthusiasm but only for a moment. "That'll make two of you to watch Mrs. Mallard and the dogs. Keep 'em off of me."

"Right." He wasn't going to talk DiNozzo out of his hare-brained scheme, so McGee hunkered down in the seat of DiNozzo's car to get what sleep he could before being asked to do the impossible: distract Mrs. Mallard.

"McGee! Wake up!"

"Huh?" McGee could have sworn that he'd only been dozing for twenty seconds.

"Nope. Twenty minutes, McAlarmClock." DiNozzo already had McGee's door open and his hand hooked beneath McGee's arm. "We're here."

The sooner he moved, the sooner DiNozzo would finish this little slice of life and let McGee get home to a nice, comfortable bed where he could spend most of the next decade recovering from his ordeal. He swung his legs out of the car, instantly pulling back when the spot on his calf where they'd removed a hefty chunk of shrapnel objected in no uncertain terms.

"C'mon, McGee. I haven't got all day. I still have to get coffee for Gibbs." DiNozzo hoisted McGee to his feet—er, foot.

McGee clung to DiNozzo's shoulders, hoping not to fall. His head spun. "This was your idea in the first place."

"Hey, McGee, are you all right?" DiNozzo—finally!—sounded concerned.

"No, I'm not all right." McGee tried not to sound peevish. _Oh, what the hell—!_ "Tony, I need to sit down. Now. Right now. Or I'm going to fall down. Or throw up. Over you," he added for emphasis. "You think there was a reason Gibbs told you to take me home?" There was a significantly decreased amount of clarity in his vision around the edges, and it seemed to portend disaster.

"You're almost there. One more step." DiNozzo grabbed him by the belt, hoisting McGee over the last step.

_How did I get so far toward the house?_

"Van Olnicker!" DiNozzo bellowed. "Front and center, seaman!"

"Ooooh!"

_Crap_. _Knees buckling_.

Growl, from a source very low to the ground.

_Double crap_.

* * *

Ziva's cell phone tingled in her pocket, and she pulled it out. The number was not one that she was familiar with. "David."

"Ms. David? Solo here."

"You have something?" Familiar rush of adrenaline.

"We do. There is a gentleman in the lobby showing a great deal of interest in Illya."

"I'll be there in one moment," Ziva promised. She grinned. Action was going to be welcome.

* * *

Gibbs closed his phone, and moved close to the door. He peered out into the hospital corridor.

"Gibbs?" Behind him, Abby's attention was caught.

"Nothing yet, Abby."

"But there's gonna be something?"

"Not if Ziva gets there first."

"That's okay, then." Abby relaxed in her chair, not letting go of Ducky's hand. "Ziva won't let anything happen to Ducky. And neither will you. Right?"

"Right." Gibbs let the word leave his mouth without placing any thought into it. It was just noise, designed to reassure his lab rat that the NCIS team leader was still in control of the world. Where the hell was the squad of bodyguards that he'd asked for? His next call was going to go to Vance, to ream his boss out for not getting more help here faster.

That could wait for the next few minutes. Right now Gibbs was more interested in observing the workers in the corridor. There was a nurse carrying something plastic and white into the farthest room; Gibbs had seen her for the last several hours and doubted that she was anyone to worry about. The flower delivery boy, now he was an unknown quantity. Gibbs surreptitiously watched the kid until he vanished back onto the elevator, minus the bouquet of flowers. Two men in scrubs with a stretcher between them entered the room next door and extracted an obese gentleman whose belly looked as though he was definitely ready to deliver a kid any day now. All very normal.

Gibbs failed to be reassured.

Good thing. It happened entirely too fast.

The THRUSH henchman exited the elevator, the door sliding closed behind him. Gibbs saw the henchman. The henchman saw Gibbs. Both drew their guns.

"NCIS! Drop your weapon!"

Shots were fired.

That led to screams, and dropped equipment, and the vase of leftover flowers on the rim of the nurses' station shattered in the crossfire. Privately, Gibbs thought that the nurses wouldn't mind. The flowers were dying, already dropping browned petals onto the surrounding floor. Now there was an even better reason to get rid of the post-dated posies. The loss of the chocolates, however, they'd regret.

It didn't last long. The henchman was a poor shot. Gibbs was not.

Not one of the nurses dashed forth to administer CPR to the bleeding man on the floor. Every one of them demonstrated an ability to follow orders when Gibbs barked, "Stay down!"

That was a good thing. Gibbs advanced on the dying henchman, kicking the gun out of the man's hand and toeing him over to make sure that the man wasn't about to pull a second pistol out of nowhere to spray devastation into the surrounding air.

Abby screamed!

Gibbs whipped around. Two more henchmen darted into Ducky's room, sliding in from behind while Gibbs was making certain that the first would no longer trouble anyone.

Fast shot—missed. Ricocheted off of the rim of the door. Left a scratch in the paint.

No time. Gibbs moved faster than he'd ever had in his life. Three steps to the room. One step forward to smash a fist into one face. Block the return blow.

Abby screeched again, and this cry had more anger in it. Was that an IV pole in her hands? No matter; right now it was a metal crowbar with a recently acquired dent. A gash in the third henchman's head demonstrated where the dent had come from. Gibbs had no doubt but that Abby would enjoy comparing the measurements of the dent in the pole to the measurements of the dent in the henchman's skull.

Gibbs would get to him later. First, the man who was swinging another fist at him.

No contest. Left hand: knock the blow off-kilter. Right: palm-strike to the nose, dead center.

The man's eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the floor.

Next: the staggering henchman with a dent in his skull. The man obviously had a headache to rival any here in this hospital. Gibbs took pity on him, and administered a non-pharmacological analgesic so that the man wouldn't feel any pain for the next few hours.

Of course, when the henchman woke up, he'd be begging for general anesthesia and surgery for his jaw. Gibbs had no pity for him. He and the other two henchmen deserved what they'd gotten for attacking Gibbs's team.

Gibbs swung around. "Abby?" _Are you all right?_

"I'm okay, Gibbs." Lying through her teeth, still game. Still shaking. "They didn't get to Ducky."

Points for the lab rat. Gibbs would be awarding her field medals next.

Not good. Team NCIS was on the defensive. Gibbs _hated_ being on the defensive.

Rapid assessment: he had allowed Ziva to be pulled away from her position by the promise of action elsewhere in the hospital. That argued for someone _planning_ how to attack the NCIS team. Someone had plotted how to remove a valuable player from the scene so that the rest could attack the target. It had very nearly worked. If Abby hadn't been as courageous as she was—Gibbs tamped down that thought. She had been, and they had a second chance. They had to make the most of it, and fast.

Communication; that was key. He stabbed the buttons on his cell, only to hear four rings and voice mail with a greeting in more than one language. Gibbs left a curt message. "Ziva. Get up here _now_."

Not good. If Ziva wasn't picking up, it was because she was busy. Gibbs didn't like what she was busy with, and he didn't like that he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Time to finish this mess. Gibbs took one more searching look outside in the corridor. The place was milling with overweight hospital security guards and scared nurses, and it was a toss-up as to who was more frightened. No guns, and no more henchmen. Gibbs shoved the door closed. "Abby. Stand here, and don't let anyone in."

"Right." Abby took up a position with her back to the door, propping it closed and positioning her heels against the floor for leverage. No one would get through.

First things first. Gibbs stabbed a well known number into his cell phone.

"Vance."

"Gibbs. Leon, it's going down _now_. I need back up."

"You'll have it, Gibbs. They'll be there in less than five minutes."

That was that. No arguing, no fussing, no hunting for less costly solutions. Back up in the form of heavily armed NCIS-trusted guards would be there in minutes. Vance knew that seconds counted. They hadn't before; now, they did.

Next step: Gibbs took a knee beside Ducky's bed, placing his lips close to Ducky's ear. "Ducky. Wake up. I need you."

Nothing. Not a twitch. Not a—

_Wait_. A deep sigh.

Gibbs put urgency into his voice. "Ducky. I _need_ you."

Ducky licked cracked lips, and Gibbs could see the effort that it cost the man. "Jethro."

Yes! "Ducky, you have a large emerald somewhere in your house. Where is it?"

A frown pulled the medical examiner's lips downward, whether from pain or trying to remember Gibbs didn't know. It wasn't relevant; what did matter was the answer.

"The emerald, Ducky. Where is it?"

"Mother…"

Gibbs worked to contain his frustration. "She doesn't have it, Ducky. It's not in her things." He tried again. "Where's the emerald, Ducky?"

Ducky told him. It was only half an answer.


	14. The Welsh Corgi is a Noble Creature

It was automatic for Ziva to assess her surroundings when she entered a room, and the hospital lobby was no different. It had the disadvantage of being large; there were many square meters to scan for danger, with many people who could be an enemy soldier. On the other hand, the advantages of this lobby included few places to hide. Ziva had been trained to look at such spots as behind a slender tree placed in a corner for decoration, or sitting on a chair facing away from a potential source of identification. Ziva herself had used such techniques with reasonable success.

There was a tree with browning leaves next to the elevator. A real tree, then, dying from lack of light. It would likely be soon replaced by someone whose job it was to try to fool people into thinking that a hospital was a pleasant place to spend time. There was a woman with a tall and gangly son towering over her behind the tree; no threat, at least not here in this country. The pair were likely visiting the father. Ziva dismissed them from her thoughts almost immediately. Likewise she could ignore the three tremendously obese women sitting—and crushing—the bench in the middle of the lobby. The trio had obtained bars of candy and were busy consuming the treats in defiance of the polite sign posted nearby requesting that visitors refrain from eating in the lobby, complaining that modern medicine had not yet come up with a satisfactory method for curing coronary artery disease. The three were no threat to her. Any movement faster than a waddle would be out of the question.

Ziva spotted Napoleon Solo toward one side of the lobby, and joined him. "Where?"

Solo gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Over there. Four of them, all watching Illya read the paper."

Yes. Solo was absolutely correct. Each of the four looked the part of a THRUSH henchman: fit and ready to fight for Graybelle's misbegotten cause of taking over the world. Ziva felt a mild distaste; when had she fallen into Tony's habit of thinking in bad movie clichés?

Perhaps it was when UNCLE had come to town, seeking to prevent the world from being taken over by madmen. Another cliché sprang to her mind: _just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you._

Ziva could contemplate the mysteries of the universe at a later time. Right now, doing something about the four in the lobby eying the retired UNCLE agent was of greater importance.

Solo read her mind. "The corridor off to the left appears to be little used," he offered. "I'm a little less tolerant of collateral damage these days than I used to be. Plus, people tend to take pictures. The downfall of cell phones, you know."

Ziva did know. The average citizen would be more than happy to whip out his or her cell phone and snap off a picture or two in hopes of selling it for a great deal of money to some entertainment station masquerading as news. It was something that the UNCLE agents hadn't needed to guard against in their heyday.

Kuryakin was likewise waiting for Ziva's arrival. Though he gave no evidence of noticing her, he nonetheless ruffled his magazine back into its original configuration, tucked it under his arm, and stood up. He carefully looked at his watch, giving the impression that his appointment time had arrived. With a casual glance around the lobby, just as any visitor might do, he ambled off in the direction of the corridor that Solo had pointed out to Ziva.

The four THRUSH minions were equally as casual, but far more modern. Instead of looking at their respective watches, two of the four pulled out their cell phones in order to 'check the time'. It was a bit awkward; only one of them was supposed to have performed the maneuver and 'notified' the others that their appointment was nigh. Clearly they'd forgotten who had been assigned the task.

Wait; their quarry was getting away! The four ceased to squabble over the cell phone mishap and moved 'casually' toward the left corridor in pursuit of Kuryakin.

Solo sniffed. "They're just not making 'em like they used to. Back in the old days, henchmen would come out of the woodwork." He brushed some nonexistent lint off of his sleeve. "Come along, my dear. We have some minions to apprehend."

For a corridor with minimal use, the seven people entering the space managed the feat with only minimal notice by the security guards and hospital guests in the lobby. There were offices up and down the corridor with heads bent over desks and computers, oblivious to the parade of agents. Every few feet there was another bulletin board with a barrage of notices letting the employees know that they had civil rights and an invitation to set up a bowling league. Ziva ignored the copious pages regarding privacy. For her, privacy meant not giving up the information in the first place. What was so hard about that concept?

Kuryakin reached the end of the corridor. He paused, as if collecting his thoughts, then pushed through the heavy metal door to the stairwell, disappearing from view.

The four henchmen, deprived of the sight of their victim, hustled to the doorway. The first shoved at the door, eager to pursue.

The door wouldn't budge.

He shoved again, harder.

Stuck.

The henchman put his shoulder into it—the UNCLE agent was getting away!

The door flew open, far more easily than it should have. The henchman stumbled, and fell. The door jerked forward, banging the henchman's head in its path. The henchman flopped over, out cold.

The second henchman was better prepared than the first, and now expecting trouble. He leaped through the doorway, holding the door back with one meaty fist, the other cocked to punch out someone's lights. It didn't matter that his opponent was old enough to be his grandfather. Kuryakin was the enemy target.

The henchman never got the chance. Kuryakin, equally prepared, assisted the man's forward momentum. He assisted the man's forward momentum right into the steel handrail of the ascending concrete staircase beyond. The man's forehead connected first with the handrail and then with the second concrete step from the bottom of the stairs.

Henchman number two: also out cold.

For Ziva, this was worrisome. If she didn't hurry, she wouldn't get any opportunity at all to take out her displeasure on a deserving henchman. There were only two left.

She slipped up silently behind one of the remaining henchmen and tapped him firmly on both carotids. The man jerked, and slipped to the floor. Ziva allowed herself a small and satisfied smile; she hadn't lost her touch. She was _good_ at it.

She turned to the last henchman, only to find that Mr. Solo had done something equally as elegant to render the man harmless.

Solo adjusted his coat sleeves and cleared his throat. He surveyed the four henchmen at their feet, Kuryakin who had stepped out from behind the door, and Ziva. He winced. "Do you suppose we could persuade your NCIS folks to cart these minions away? Knocking them out was easy. Dragging their bodies to a secure holding cell seems like a lot of effort these days."

* * *

"Do have a nice cuppa, my dear," Mrs. Mallard cooed, holding the tea cup to McGee's lips.

Not that he was in any condition to object. No, McGee was going to remain sitting on this brocade sofa in the parlor where DiNozzo and that seaman Van Olnicker had dumped him, and he wasn't going to try to get up for at least the next five years. Holding his head up and his eyes open were about the best that he could do for himself at the moment, and even that was in question.

No, McGee didn't want any tea. He wanted drugs, and the more the better. The spot where they'd dug the shrapnel out of his back was throbbing and sore. Sore? Hah! Pounding, aching, stabbing…he could come with another half dozen adjectives to describe what he was feeling without half trying.

That didn't matter to Mrs. Mallard. "Another sip, that's a good boy," she crooned. "Mother will fix it, make you feel all nice and cozy inside."

Tea would make him throw up. "Mrs. Mallard—"

"Another sip," she insisted, pouring it down McGee's throat.

Cough. Splutter. Unswallowed tea cascading onto DiNozzo's borrowed tee shirt, retrieved from the trunk of DiNozzo's car so that McGee could sit in the front seat without the seat fabric requiring heavy duty cleaning afterward. McGee's own shirt was covered with congealed blood and currently sitting inside a protective plastic bag. _Serves you right, Tony, for dumping me here. Aren't you finished searching the house yet?_

Something warm, solid, and alive leaned against his leg. Agony stabbed through him; that was where he had another hole in him, courtesy of flying quartz shrapnel. McGee couldn't help it; he let out an agonized hiss.

Mrs. Mallard beamed. "That's a good boy, Tyson," she told the Welsh Corgi at McGee's feet, the dog with the snarling lip.

_You know exactly what you're doing, don't you, Tyson? You know exactly where to dump your furry little feet to cause me the most—_

Tyson shifted.

McGee bit his lip, trying to keep the inappropriate language inside and not shrieking out to scandalize Ducky's mother. His stomach roiled threateningly.

"More tea?"

"Tony!" It came out as a cry. A croak. A whimper. An _I'll do anything you ask, only get me out of here_ plea.

"Oh, dear." It wasn't Mrs. Mallard. This time it was Seaman Ryan Van Olnicker, peering out through the chintz curtains as he passed by the window, drawing attention to himself with a tray of scones in his hands. "Are those men supposed to be running across that lawn?"

"What?" McGee hadn't realized that the young seaman had returned to the parlor, but those words banished the remnants of the comforting cobwebs in his brain. Clarity sprung forth with an unwelcome gush of adrenaline. "What men?"

Van Olnicker pointed through the window, juggling the tray and completely forgetting that in order to see what the seaman was pointing at McGee would have to rise from the sofa. Not only that, but McGee would next disturb the beast at his feet, push aside the old lady with the hot tea cup, traverse the distance between the sofa and the window, and then persuade his drugged eyes to focus on whatever it was that Van Olnicker had discovered. It was a complex task.

No matter. McGee was an NCIS agent, devoted to the cause of Justice, Truth, and The American Way. More to the point, it sounded as though he was about to be plunged yet again in a fight for his life.

_Crap_.

McGee took a deep breath, and hoisted himself into an upright position.

His brain responded by allowing every corpuscle of blood to drain out of his head. Vision vanished. Butterflies buzzed in his ears, despite the fact that butterflies generally tended to be more silent than anything. McGee clutched the back of the sofa in order to keep from falling.

_Deep breath. Deep breath. You can do this. Knees, keep me standing. We can sit back down later, once we see that Van Olnicker has mistaken the pool boy for a gaggle of THRUSH henchmen_. McGee used his other hand to grab onto the wing-backed chair to provide additional leverage on his journey to the window. Hand over hand he progressed, first hanging onto the piano, then a decorative table, but bypassing the antique rocker that looked as though it would fall apart if someone breathed too heavily in its vicinity. At the moment, McGee was breathing _very_ heavily.

Nothing else available: he grabbed onto Van Olnicker's shoulder as the sturdiest of objects to maintain a horizontal position. "Where are they?" McGee's other hand pushed open the curtains, doing double duty by holding the fabric out of the way against the wall and—oh, by the way—using the wall for additional support.

Even through the drugs, McGee could see them. Van Olnicker hadn't been mistaking anything. It was hard to tell how many—double vision? Quadruple?—but even if he divided the quantity by four, the NCIS agents inside were substantially outnumbered.

This was _so_ not good.

The leader of the henchmen, was that—? Crap, yes, it was. Distance didn't matter; McGee could identify that sharp voice anywhere. He'd be hearing it in his nightmares for the next decade or so.

"You idiots! This is the wrong house! Mallard's place is on the _other_ side of the road!"

Nice to know that THRUSH had the same personnel issues that McGee himself faced. McGee would pit his clerical help against Graybelle's henchmen any day. It would be a toss up as to who had fewer addled brain cells.

Unfortunately, that was in the smarts department. Bricker—excuse me, _Bambi_—wore heels that lifted her bosom into the vicinity of the top of the Washington Monument. Dietrich _my mom named me after Marlena_ Schmidt wielded an eye liner pen like a weapon. And Ryan Van Olnicker, right there in the room with McGee, was still wearing Mrs. Mallard's frilly pink apron and a charming smudge of flour on his nose that he'd evidently decided not to wash off for a while.

Which really didn't matter, because—except for Van Olnicker—McGee's crowd of keyboard kops weren't here. They were probably back at Headquarters, McGee realized, doing their nails. Again. That was what McGee had caught them doing whenever he had left them unsupervised for more than five minutes.

No, why it really didn't matter was because in about thirty seconds, McGee was about to be dead. So were Van Olnicker, Mrs. Mallard, and Tony DiNozzo. The dogs would likely scurry away to live to snarl at someone else. Clearly the canines were the smartest ones around.

"Ooooh!" squealed Van Olnicker. "Is that the enemy?" He darted from the window, fleeing.

Which ripped away one of the supports that McGee was counting on, and he sagged, pain searing through his back. He landed on his knees, clutching the window sill, trying to get back up. _What the hell, I may as well stay right here on the floor. I need the wall for cover, as long as I can see out through the window_.

He started to call for DiNozzo, and thought better of it. McGee doubted that his voice would reach to the next floor up, and the first shot fired would do an even better job of notifying his partner that the Mallard residence was about to be invaded. Of course, the first bullet might go straight through McGee's own heart, and he wished as he'd never wished before that his own trusty handgun was in his hand. _Abby must have it as part of the crime scene where they found Ducky and me._

Mrs. Mallard, from across the room, trilled, "would you like a scone, Timothy? They're ever so good."

Somewhat desperately, McGee said, "Mrs. Mallard, please get down behind the sofa! They're going to be shooting at us!"

"No, I don't think I'm going to permit that in the house, Timothy," Mrs. Mallard replied sternly. "Manners, you know."

"Mrs. Mallard—"

Van Olnicker reappeared from the kitchen, two rifles in his hands and boxes of ammo stuffed into the pockets of the frilly pink apron. He extended one of the rifles to McGee. "Do you think we'll need these?"

_Are you kidding?_ McGee picked his jaw up off of the carpet and accepted the weapon. "Where did you get these?"

"We're supposed to be prepared," Van Olnicker admonished his superior. "You sent me out on a mission to protect Mrs. Mallard, so I brought weapons."

"I told you to protect Mrs. Mallard from _herself_," McGee started to say, then gave it up as a bad job. Bottom line: McGee had a weapon and ammo to go with it.

He hefted the gun and stared at it. The lacquer on the barrel had an oddly pink finish to it. "This isn't military issue."

"Of course not!" Van Olnicker was scandalized. "Those nasty, filthy things? Mother bought these for me, as a graduation gift after Basic Training. See the lovely etching on the scope? Mother had that done especially for me."

McGee devoutly hoped that the weapon wouldn't blow up in his face. Then again, considering the odds, maybe that wouldn't be the worst way to go.

Van Olnicker pushed open the window. His own rifle gleamed lavender in the sunlight. "They're coming over the lawn. Oh, look out for that petunia garden!"

"My petunias?" Mrs. Mallard picked up her head. "They're trampling my petunias?"

_Bang!_ The THRUSH henchmen kicked in the door.

"Tyson! Contessa!" Mrs. Mallard snapped.

Two Welsh Corgis jumped to attention. Two more dogs raced from the kitchen to join the pack, stolen scones disappearing down their throats as they ran on short stubby legs.

"They've stomped on my petunias!" Mrs. Mallard told the canine pack.

McGee could hear Dr. Mallard's lecture in his head. _The Welsh Corgi, Timothy, is a noble creature. Most people, seeing their diminutive size, think of them as a lap dog. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Welsh Corgi was bred to be a herd dog, for the control of herds of cows, and they are quite talented at it. They are devoted family pets and rather good at protecting any children in the household._

There were no children present, but McGee supposed that Mrs. Mallard, her mind in tatters, would qualify. The dogs leaped forward, snarling.

Four Welsh Corgis, all intent on the same intruder, brought down the THRUSH henchman with the same finality as a three hundred pound linebacker.

The henchman cried out and, falling under the furry onslaught, accidentally fired his gun. The bullet ricocheted off the doorframe and back toward the next henchman.

The second henchman behind him, convinced that he'd been fired on, discharged his own weapon into the interior of the entranceway, neatly taking out one of the light bulbs on the chandelier.

That gave the two NCIS agents cause to return fire.

"NCIS! Drop your weapons!" McGee yelled, hoping that someone could hear it and doubting that the sound emerged as anything more than a croak. Even if it did, all the THRUSH henchmen would do was laugh, right after they took away his pink rifle.

* * *

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

It only took one _bang_ to notify DiNozzo that his partner, the seaman, and Ducky's mother were in trouble. In a flash, DiNozzo's own handgun was out and he was running toward the staircase that led to the parlor.

_Maybe it's a blessing that I haven't yet found the emerald. It would be embarrassing to find it, only to have THRUSH take it from me._

DiNozzo skidded to a stop at the top of the stairs.

There were four Welsh Corgis in front of the main entrance, growling and chewing up a THRUSH henchman and eying the next one in line hungrily.

There was Seaman Van Olnicker, with a rifle in his hands gleaming purple—purple? _Purple?_—firing at something or someone outside. "Ewww. I think I hit another one. Ewwww."

There was McGee, collapsed by the wall, sticking a _pink_ rifle out through the broken glass. _Gonna be a story there, McGee, if we live long enough to tell it_.

Worst of all, DiNozzo could see another two dozen or more THRUSH minions running across the road from the estate located there, all headed for Ducky's home, led by Commander Graybelle.

_Oh, crap._


	15. A Remarkable Woman

Gibbs yanked his cell phone out of his pocket with one hand, the other still hanging onto the wheel to his car and swinging the vehicle around a corner. He wasn't in a hurry, but neither was he about to dawdle. Ducky had given him the key to where that damn emerald was, and retrieving it would go a long way to stopping the foolishness that had been going on. Another car on the road, competing for the same spot, honked at him. Gibbs ignored the annoyed driver. "Gibbs. What is it, DiNozzo?"

"Boss, I need back up!"

"DiNozzo?" Gibbs would have floored it, but he wasn't certain of where his man was.

"Ducky's place, boss! Hurry!" The signal to the cell phone clicked off, but not before Gibbs heard one more very disturbing sound: gunfire.

"Agent Gibbs?" In the back seat, Solo leaned forward. Kuryakin was quicker to guess what the problem was, and surreptitiously clutched the seat in preparation.

Gibbs stomped on the gas pedal, and the car leaped forward. "They're in trouble."

* * *

If they had had more time, Gibbs would have opted for a silent approach, parking a few blocks away in order to sneak up on the enemy unawares.

There _was_ no time. Gibbs pulled the car to a screeching halt, and the four agents piled out. "Ziva."

"Back entrance. Got it." The Israeli agent was gone in a flash.

There was a long and dangerous looking handgun in Solo's hand. "I'll flank right."

"That leaves me with the left," was Kuryakin's offer. "I'm assuming, Agent Gibbs, that you prefer to handle the frontal assault." It was not a question.

Almost as good as having his whole team here with him, instead of half of them battling it out inside the house. Gibbs took a moment for gratitude, and moved on quickly. "Go."

He could trust them. Gibbs knew it inside and out, knew he could trust the pair of retired UNCLE agents as much as he'd trusted anyone.

Ducky's home was a mess, swarming with THRUSH agents. What the hell were DiNozzo and McGee doing here? DiNozzo was supposed to have taken McGee straight home, then return to the hospital to join back up with the rest of the team. This was out of the way for DiNozzo, and Gibbs hadn't a clue as to why the senior NCIS agent would have come here. Maybe McGee had remembered something? Then why the hell hadn't DiNozzo called it in, instead of haring off on his own? Gibbs shoulder-rolled behind a convenient rhododendron and took aim.

One THRUSH agent down for the count. Only about thirty more to go.

Maybe not. Gibbs took a closer look, and one corner of his mouth edged upward. He'd always said those Welsh Corgis could be relied on, and here was proof: the small dogs had taken out two more henchmen and were busy chewing on various arms and legs, growling like wolves. A third henchman, eyes white with terror, had been backed up against the white picket fence that surrounded the veranda, held there by one of the dogs; Tyson, Gibbs thought. Yeah, that snarling lip belonged to Tyson.

Gibbs managed to remove four more minions from the fray before they noticed that their rear guard had been compromised. He was cautiously pleased; he'd expected them to take notice well before that. _Not the smartest birds in the nest_. Another shot arrived from the window of Ducky's house, and Gibbs wondered whether it belonged to DiNozzo or McGee.

He frowned. The sound of the firearm was deeper in pitch, less booming. It was a rifle, not a handgun. DiNozzo probably had a rifle in the trunk of his car, but why would he have taken it into Ducky's house where Mrs. Mallard could get at it?

No, he heard a handgun from the upper floor, and it sounded like DiNozzo's. McGee, he knew, didn't have a weapon. The junior agent's handgun was part of evidence from the warehouse where they'd rescued him and the medical examiner; Gibbs had bagged and tagged it himself, along with some of the quartz crystals that had made a ruin of the man's back and leg. Furthermore, McGee was flying on prescription drugs. He shouldn't have a weapon in his hands, not unless they wanted a case of accidental manslaughter or suicide.

Gibbs stared at the house, uncertain of what he was seeing. There were two rifles, each barrel stuck out through a broken pane of glass, firing back and trying make the THRUSH henchmen keep their distance. Gibbs glanced up at the sky, wondering if it was the encroaching dusk that was turning the barrels of the rifles pink and purple. Didn't seem like it; it was far too early in the day for sundown to hit.

Had to be something, and Gibbs wasn't about to waste time figuring out the physics of the rainbow. He had people inside—and Ducky's mother.

The tide of THRUSH agents was turning. They'd finally realized that they were being attacked from all four points and were looking for their own cover.

Time to take the fight inside with the rest of 'em. Gibbs fired off three quick shots in succession, just enough to make the enemy fall back for cover so that he could dart to the next closest point. Leap-frogging, he advanced to the porch, hunkering down beneath the steps.

Contessa looked up. She started to snarl, until she recognized him. A quick tail wag—_glad for reinforcements. Tell these idiots to go away_.

Gibbs pointed at a THRUSH agent blocking the entrance to the house.

Ears went down. Tail out straight. Snarl on the lips; Contessa charged.

A properly fed and exercised Welsh Corgi weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty pounds. Contessa, like the rest of her pack, was an expert at wheedling treats out of her mistress.

_Forty_ pounds of canine flesh hit the THRUSH agent squarely in the back. Teeth closed onto a gluteus maximus.

The THRUSH minion screeched so loudly that everyone in the house turned to look.

Gibbs took the opportunity to barrel into the house, fists swinging. His first victim was Contessa's target; the man slid gratefully into unconsciousness after Gibbs's blow connected with the minion's glass jaw. The dog let go of the man's rump to return to terrorizing the people outside, and Gibbs could have sworn that she winked at him as she left.

Guns were no longer an option. Hand to hand combat was the only way to get anything done. Gibbs grabbed one henchman by the shoulder, swung him around, and slammed a fist into his face. Exit one more minion.

Assess: Seaman Van Olnicker held a vase in his hands and was threatening any henchman that approached him with a good dousing from the stale water and rotting vegetation. The man was still wearing a pink frilly apron—_didn't I tell you to get rid of that thing, Van Olnicker?_—and the smudge of flour on his nose hadn't budged one bit. _And I told you to wash your face, seaman!_ Never mind; the man was still on his feet and he was tying up the attention of two THRUSH henchmen who were trying to figure out how to down the man without getting smashed in the face by a crystal vase.

McGee was down, but not out. He was using the wall to prop himself up, swinging a pink rifle—_pink? Pink? It really is pink! What the-?_—like a club to keep the henchmen at a distance. Even as Gibbs watched, McGee rammed the butt of the rifle into the mid-section of a deserving henchman. The man whoofed, and went down, clutching his belly and hoping to start breathing again sometime soon.

Unfortunately, that left McGee open on his left flank. Another henchman darted in. He dodged McGee's hastily raised rifle-club and got inside McGee's guard. It only took one mis-aimed blow: the henchman accidentally hit McGee in the back, but it was the spot where surgeons had recently removed a large quantity of quartz shrapnel. McGee didn't even bother with a cry of pain. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he sank to the floor. The pink rifle clattered to the hardwood floor beside him.

The henchman wasn't allowed to gloat over his victory. Gibbs leaped over the body in front of him to grab the henchman by the arm—_yank!_ The arm came out of its socket in such a way as to predict a short and painful stay in the prison infirmary. Gibbs resolved on the spot to make sure that the infirmary visit didn't happen too soon.

The crowd of henchmen was getting smaller. Ziva, from the rear of the house, was wading through them like a whirling dervish. A love tap here: one down. A _twist_ there: another one finished. Poetry in motion.

Solo had come to the conclusion that he was too old for such shenanigans. Instead, he'd reversed his handgun and was using the butt of the weapon to knock out the opposition. Unnoticed, he'd walk up behind a deserving combatant and rap them solidly where it would do the most good. A pile of downed henchmen bore mute and painful testimony to the effectiveness of his technique.

Kuryakin too used the items around him to his advantage. If there was a vase with filthy, used water in it, the contents were flung at a THRUSH agent and then the vase cracked upon the agent's skull. A small figurine—fake, he later sniffed. The real one is in The Cloisters—became a handy sap, and caused three more THRUSH agents to take unplanned naps. Kuryakin kept up his end of the fight.

The numbers of THRUSH agents on the first floor was decreasing, but they were decreasing faster than Gibbs could account for. Why?

THRUSH had a goal: the second floor. More and more agents fled from the quartet wreaking devastation among their numbers, and toward where they thought the emerald was. Once they had the prize in their possession, they reasoned, they could escape from the crazy NCIS agents and go back to the comparatively easy task of subjugating all humanity.

The only man standing between them and their prize was Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. He blocked the hallway at the top of the stairs, using hands and feet to prevent any from advancing.

Graybelle led the charge. The man wasn't tall, but his shoulders were enough to cause a bull to think twice, and strapped to his back was a long gray tube that was only too familiar to McGee on the floor below: the PAMELA! Graybelle swung, landing a blow to DiNozzo's chest. DiNozzo staggered back, but regained his footing. He blocked the next punch, and tried a feint to Graybelle's head. Graybelle dodged that one, but the next blow from DiNozzo rattled his brains. Graybelle sank to his knees.

That didn't matter; there were too many more behind Graybelle. One henchman attacked DiNozzo from the left, while the other grabbed a tall lamp to smash it onto DiNozzo from the right.

DiNozzo wasn't finished. He blocked the lamp with his arm, gritting his teeth against the immediate damage to the bone inside, and simply absorbed the punishment that the henchman on the left meted out. The only alternative was to allow the crowd of THRUSH to run over him and get to the bedrooms behind him. Just because DiNozzo hadn't yet found the emerald didn't mean that some lucky minion wouldn't stumble over it and run off, shouting in glee. DiNozzo happened to like the world as it was, and allowing Graybelle to conquer it would seriously interfere with that enjoyment. He fought back.

Gibbs _had_ to get to his agent. DiNozzo was about to be overrun by THRUSH, and no amount of DiNozzo style determination was going to win out over a dozen to one odds.

The staircase wasn't big enough for more than one man to fight. Gibbs grabbed the first man he came upon, taking hold of the man's shirt, and hoisted him off the stairs. He tossed the THRUSH henchman into the oncoming rush of Ziva, Solo, and Kuryakin, trusting that the trio would prevent the henchman from rejoining the fight. Reach, grab—another one bit the dust. Gibbs fought his way up the stairs, followed by his conglomerate team.

* * *

Graybelle regained his senses, but not his sense. A quick scan of the enemy approaching on his flank told Commander Graybelle that he needed to either acquire his objective swiftly or withdraw from the field of battle in disgrace. All he needed to do was to acquire the emerald, shove it into place into PAMELA strapped conveniently onto his back, and start aiming at his enemies.

Disgrace was not a palatable option. It was _not_ one that Graybelle would accept. He _needed_ to get through DiNozzo's position before Gibbs and his allies arrived.

He acted.

DiNozzo was trying to stop, or at least slow down, the mob of THRUSH minions long enough for his reinforcements to arrive. DiNozzo was doing a good job of it; Gibbs and his followers were advancing swiftly, and Graybelle had little time.

Graybelle took advantage of one of the few assets that he had: his height. More specifically, his _lack_ of height, an attribute that others tended to dismiss as a drawback rather than an asset. Not a problem for Graybelle; he had gone laughing all the way to the finish line on more than one occasion, and he was going to do it now.

He was on his knees, from the blow that DiNozzo had landed. Good; one less step in the process. Graybelle used his smaller stature to crawl between the legs of the combatants, neatly sliding through the melee and on to his objective: Mrs. Mallard's bedroom where the emerald was certain to be. Graybelle needed to find it before Gibbs and the others demolished Graybelle's assault squad. He scrabbled through the forest of moving legs, getting his fingers stomped on more than once—DiNozzo did his share, trying to prevent Graybelle's progress—and through!

He jumped to his feet and ran toward the bedroom.

DiNozzo tried to catch him, right up until the point where an over-sized THRUSH minion, taking advantage of the distraction, grabbed DiNozzo and landed a blow to his chin that would have sunk a water buffalo.

DiNozzo had considerably less mass than a water buffalo. His knees jellied, his eyes rolled back, and he slid to the floor.

Graybelle couldn't help but feel good about that. He resolved, once he'd finished conquering the world, to see it happen to DiNozzo over and over again. Come to think about it, he'd apply similar tactics to the rest of the combined NCIS and UNCLE agents, just because it would feel so wonderful.

He began to see what his father, the late Dr. Enrico Bellagrigio, had seen in Total Domination of The World.

* * *

Progress was being made, but not enough of it and not fast enough. Gibbs grabbed another henchman and thrust him toward Ziva. The Mossad officer had no patience, and she dumped the man over the stair railing for a drop of some ten feet to the hard floor below. A small table shattered underneath the man, nearly impaling him on a stake made from one splintered leg. Ziva winced, hoping that the table hadn't been an antique.

Then it happened: her partner went down. Ziva saw it happen as if in slow motion. She saw DiNozzo turn to grab at Graybelle, and miss by mere fingertips. Saw an overlarge henchman yank at DiNozzo's arm, smash a fist into his face. Saw Tony go down.

Heard Gibbs roar.

Heard her own shriek of rage.

The rest dissolved in a blur of fury.

* * *

Gibbs plowed through the remainder of the THRUSH minions like chaff on the wind, tossing bodies behind him for the others to finish. Fists flew, arms blocked blows, until he reached his downed agent.

One more THRUSH henchman between Gibbs and his senior field agent. Only one minion covering the trail of Commander Graybelle into Mrs. Mallard's bedroom.

The minion was big. He bared his teeth.

Gibbs broke those teeth.

The minion toppled over.

Gibbs spared a moment for his agent. "DiNozzo?" He had little time, but he made time for this.

DiNozzo had pulled himself half up against the wall, clutching one arm with the other, in obvious pain. "Go…after him, boss," he ordered, oblivious to the chain of command. "Get 'im."

Hurting, but able to wait. The PAMELA couldn't. Gibbs made the hard choice. "Don't go anywhere, DiNozzo." _As if he could_. Gibbs darted down the hall, after Graybelle, the others following him.

Graybelle still had PAMELA in his possession, and even without the emerald the weapon was dangerous. With enough effort it could be adapted to another gem, as McGee had proved. The cheap quartz had shattered, but Graybelle wouldn't make that mistake again. Unless Gibbs and company could apprehend the man, he would go on to try again and again with better quality stones until he succeeded. Gibbs was _not_ going to let that happen. It was going to end, here and now, in Ducky's house. In Ducky's mother's bedroom. Graybelle wasn't going to get away.

A high-pitched shriek emanated from Mrs. Mallard's bedroom. Gibbs leaped over a fallen henchman—_nice work, DiNozzo_—and aimed for the doorway.

Mrs. Mallard's bedroom was lovely. The coverlet to the four poster bed was a lacy white, matching the curtains to two tall windows overlooking the garden below. A small dresser topped with a lady's mirror lined itself along one wall. Another mirror, floor length, stood in one corner. A trio of framed silhouettes graced the flowered wallpaper.

In the center of the room, down on his knees on the Persian rug and whimpering in agony, was Commander Graybelle. Mrs. Mallard had Graybelle's elbow behind him in a tight armlock, applying pressure.

"Thief!" she hissed at him. "Heathen! Scoundrel! How dare you enter a lady's boudoir to steal her jewels!" She yanked upward, and Graybelle shrieked, helpless in the grasp of the elderly woman.

Gibbs skidded to a stop, and gawked.

Solo came up behind him and took in the scene, the demented lady thoroughly in control of the soon-to-be-ex-naval commander. "I guess Mr. Waverly was right," he offered dryly. "Mrs. Mallard is a _remarkable_ woman."


	16. Where Else Would One Keep an Emerald?

"Or maybe not." McGee sank down onto the remnants of the sofa in the parlor, his face white and beaded with sweat. "You can just let me know what you find."

Gibbs nodded, just as well satisfied. "Stay where you are, McGee," he ordered. "DiNozzo?"

DiNozzo's eyes were glazed over, and one hand was cradling an obviously damaged arm, cushioning it across his chest. Ziva hovered close behind, hoping not to have to catch him if his knees gave out. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, boss," he lied. "Lead me to it."

Gibbs studied the man for a moment, wondering if he should just order DiNozzo to sit down and get the passing out part over with. Nah; with his luck, DiNozzo wouldn't sink into unconsciousness. He'd just lie there, arm throbbing, biting his lip until it bled. Gibbs opted to offer the man distraction until the medics could arrive with something a little more medically approved for pain control.

Graybelle glowered at them from his spot on an upholstered chair, hands and feet tied to prevent escape. Seaman Van Olnicker had charge of the prisoner, a pale lavender rifle in his hands, a frilly apron around his midriff, and the charming smudge of flour still stuck to his nose. Gibbs glared; rock and a hard place. He could order Van Olnicker to wash his face right now, but that would delay recovery of the emerald. He needed Van Olnicker to ride herd on Graybelle and his men while Gibbs and team retrieved the gemstone. The PAMELA, cause of the whole ruckus, had been removed from its position on Graybelle's back and now sat on the coffee table where everyone could see it, worthless without the emerald.

This case had already taken too damn long. Gibbs elected to ignore the flour—for now. He turned to Mrs. Mallard, gracefully making her entrance down the grand staircase, one hand lightly on Mr. Solo's arm. The other hand bore a delicate fan. The lady's make-up had been repaired since her exertions.

Gibbs started the emerald recovery process, reigning in his impatience. "Mrs. Mallard, I'd like to ask you about an emerald that you have."

"Yes?" Mrs. Mallard turned a vague stare on him, oblivious to the various groaning bodies in the room, henchmen and NCIS agents alike. "Which one? The ring? I'd hoped to give it to Donald one day, once he'd found a girl. But the silly boy never put himself out, only brought home hussies."

Gibbs exchanged a short glance with Solo. "No, not a ring. A necklace. With a large emerald in the center."

"I don't like it," Mrs. Mallard told him sternly. "Much too gaudy."

Kuryakin tried. "Mother," he said, moving into her field of vision, "Mother, I'd like to show Agent Gibbs the emerald necklace. Where is it?"

Mrs. Mallard glared. "You aren't my Donald!" she snapped, rapping Kuryakin's fingers smartly with the flat edge of the fan. "Get away from me! Help! Murder! Police!"

Kuryakin yelped, and backed away. "How does she know?"

"A mother always knows," Ziva murmured in the background.

"You're not my Donald! You're a ruffian, and a hooligan! Get away from me!"

"It's okay, Mrs. Mallard," Gibbs soothed, stepping between them for distraction—and to hide Kuryakin from view. "What about the emerald? Ducky said you put it somewhere."

"Oh? Which one?" Her sudden change of attitude was disturbing.

Solo raised his eyebrows, taking a new tack. "I believe Mr. Waverly gave it to you," he offered.

It worked. Mrs. Mallard calmed down immediately. She melted. "How is the dear man? It's been years since I've seen him."

Solo smiled. "He's resting comfortably," he improvised, neglecting to add that his former boss was resting six feet under and had been for the past several years. "He sends his best."

Mrs. Mallard beamed. "He always was a charmer," she confided to Solo. She frowned delicately. "Do I know you?"

"I'm a friend of Mr. Waverly's," Solo told her. "He asked if you were taking good care of the emerald."

Mrs. Mallard sighed. "I'm afraid that the setting wasn't quite up to snuff. It broke, and I've asked Donald to have it reset for me."

Gibbs could almost feel the others come on point at that. Mrs. Mallard _did_ know where the emerald was. The trick now was to extract the information. The group held their collective breath.

Solo exerted his charming best. _Watching this, DiNozzo? This is a man who's been doing this since before you were born_.

"It broke?" Solo cocked his head quizzically. "I'm sorry to hear that. Donald was going to have it reset?" He paused artfully. "You know, this might present an opportunity. You said that the necklace was too gaudy, didn't you?"

Mrs. Mallard smiled. "Quite so. Now, I certainly shouldn't wish to tell that to Alexander. He's quite a dear, you know, and he did mean it in the nicest way. Mr. Mallard was rather understanding of the gift, under the circumstances. He could have put up a fuss."

Not so Kuryakin. "_I_ gave it to her," he muttered dourly. "I slipped in one night, placed it into her jewelry box, and slipped back out. Mr. Waverly never knew anything about it."

Solo spared his partner a glance. "Are you certain of that, Illya?"

Sigh. "No."

_Now there's a story that deserves telling_. Gibbs kept quiet and let Solo work.

Solo nodded to Mrs. Mallard. "That's nice to hear." He shifted his position, changing the subject back to what they needed. "The emerald; how about we look for a setting that's a little more appropriate? Something with a little more taste? We can select what you'd like."

"What a wonderful young man you are," Mrs. Mallard exclaimed, completely missing the full head of silver hair that Mr. Solo possessed. "What a lovely idea!"

Solo made a small show of looking around him. "We'll need the emerald," he told her. "We can't determine the best setting for the emerald if we don't have it available to put into the jewelry. Have you seen it?"

"Well, of course I've seen it," Mrs. Mallard said crisply. "I told Donald to take it to the jewelers."

"Did he? Take it to the jewelers, I mean."

Gibbs could hardly stand still, waiting for the answer.

Mrs. Mallard sniffed. "Absolutely not, the lazy lad! I've been after him for weeks to get it done, and has he paid attention to his poor old mother?" Dramatic sigh. "What are the young people coming to, these days?"

"Quite so." Solo didn't spare a glance for anyone but Mrs. Mallard. "The jewelers?" he prodded. "Was Donald going to take it to them?"

Mrs. Mallard became crafty. "I found a way to remind him," she announced, a gleam in her eye.

"Yes? How is that?"

"I put the emerald where he couldn't miss it," she told Solo.

_If he couldn't miss it, then why doesn't he know where it is?_ Gibbs kept his face expressionless. _If my mind ever goes, I hope someone will have the decency to shoot me_.

"Show me," Solo urged, never losing his patience.

"This way, dear boy." Mrs. Mallard replaced her hand into the crook of Solo's arm, leading him away. The others followed, with the exception of McGee, Van Olnicker, and the THRUSH agents. Graybelle, too, was tied up—literally.

Mrs. Mallard made her way to the garage behind the house, pausing occasionally to sniff at the roses that grew in profusion around edges of the edifice. "I've always loved roses," she confided to Solo.

"They become you," Solo smiled. "Pink roses, for a lovely lady."

"Flatterer," she admonished, dimpling.

"The emerald." Solo gently guided her back to the all-important task. "You say it's in the garage?" He pushed open the door for her. _Where else would one keep an emerald but in a storage area for cars?_

Ducky's Morgan sat there, quiet yet still gleaming with leashed power, and Gibbs could appreciate the enjoyment that his friend had with such a vehicle. The dust had been removed from the black metal sides despite the days of rest the car had endured, and even roadside mud was no longer present on the tires. The car bore evidence of frequent and meticulous cleaning, and Gibbs wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Ducky took a rag to the exterior each night after returning home from a hard day's work at NCIS. Yes, there was the rag, tossed onto a convenient shelf on the side of the garage.

Gibbs, his hand under DiNozzo's arm, helped the man to sit on a bench to one side of the garage. DiNozzo sank to the hard surface with a barely concealed groan, trying not to close his eyes and failing. Gibbs pursed his lips; help in the form of medics should be arriving soon, and it would be a toss-up as to who he'd send out first: DiNozzo or McGee. Had to give the man credit; he was going to see this through to the end.

Best get to the task at hand. Solo already was chivvying Mrs. Mallard along. "Where is the emerald?"

Mrs. Mallard sighed with gentle exasperation. "Where else would one place a piece of jewelry in need of repair?" She pointed to the compartment between the pair of leather seats. "If Donald had it with him, then there is _no excuse_ for neglecting to take it to the jewelers'!"

Gibbs leaned over, his long arms reaching for the compartment that Mrs. Mallard indicated. He lifted the lid, exposing the contents to the group.

There it was, sitting on top of several neatly stacked papers inside the compartment, a large green and gleaming stone sitting slightly apart from its golden chain prison. Green lights flickered dimly in the sunlight blocked by the NCIS and UNCLE agents. A heavy gold chain bearing a setting with a prong bent back bore mute evidence as to why the gem was here.

"I'll take that." Kuryakin reached for the emerald. "I've kept it safe for several decades."

"Until now," Solo reminded him.

"Not my fault, Napoleon. Those papers were supposed to have destroyed, not sent to Commander Graybelle. That's what started this whole mess."

"I have a better idea." Gibbs neatly plucked up the emerald before Kuryakin could get his hands on it. He whirled around and grabbed a hammer from the workbench behind DiNozzo.

"What are you doing?" Kuryakin exclaimed. "Gibbs—!"

Too late. Gibbs brought the hammer down onto the emerald with a single harsh blow.

The emerald shattered.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then—

"I never liked that piece anyway," Mrs. Mallard announced. "_Thank_ you, Mr. Gibbs!"


	17. After Word

"I think sitting down might be a wise move on my part, Jethro." The medical examiner was looking decidedly peaked as Gibbs maneuvered him into the mansion, one arm under Ducky's and the other pushing the door open to guide him in. "Mind you, I'm pleased that you were able to persuade Dr. Brody to release me, but I shan't be coming in to the office for several days. You might want to warn Mr. Palmer that we shall have quite a backlog of work to catch up on upon my return."

Gibbs chuckled. "I'll do that, Ducky. Let's get you inside. And, by the way, you're babbling."

"Am I?" Ducky looked around the parlor as though he'd never hoped to see it again. _Not far from the truth, my friend. Not far from the truth_. Ducky blinked. "I suspect it is from the side effects of the analgesia I've ingested. Why, I remember a case, several years ago it was, where I extracted sixteen intact tablets of oxycodone from the stomach of a deceased young sailor. The initial supposition was suicide by drug overdose, but the quantity was insufficient as well as unincorporated into the vascular circulation—" He stopped short, taking in the rest of the parlor's inhabitants. "My goodness. We are a sorry lot, aren't we?"

DiNozzo: arm strapped to his chest, wearing a pajama top around his shoulders since it wouldn't fit over or around the sling. He was also wearing lines of pain that suggested he too was benefiting from prescribed narcotics. McGee: taking up more than his share of sofa in order to elevate his leg where the shrapnel had hit it. He demonstrated more couth in front of the ladies by wearing something Fitting for an Author in Residence, a bathrobe that was freshly washed. Gibbs suspected Abby, perched on the arm of the sofa, had retrieved enough of McGee's clothing to keep him from complaining too much while recuperating in the clutches of Mrs. Mallard and her Welsh Corgis. Even Ziva bore a fading black eye from where she'd been too slow to duck. Gibbs nodded to himself; it had been a wise decision to cluster his chicks in the same house. He could keep an eye on all of them during the convalescent period.

Abby jumped up. "C'mon, Ducky. You need to sit down," she scolded. "Gibbs, help him to this chair."

"Yes, Abby." Since that was what he intended to do in the first place, Gibbs proceeded on course. Gibbs was not best pleased at the wobbling gait his medical examiner demonstrated, but there was little he could do about it except make sure that the man didn't fall down and rip out the stitches in his chest. Gibbs felt a chill run up and down his spine at how close it had been. They could have been gathered here for Ducky's funeral. He eased the man down onto the seat of the chair, well aware that without help Ducky's descent would have been a great deal less controlled.

Kuryakin approached. He too bore evidence of the case, having replaced the dressing across his forehead with a small bandage that gleaned whitely in the afternoon sun shining through the windows. He extended his hand. "Dr. Mallard, it's a pleasure to finally meet you properly. I'm—"

"Illya Kuryakin. Yes, I'm well aware of who you are," Ducky interrupted.

Kuryakin halted. "You are?"

Solo too bore a puzzled expression. "You know Illya?"

Ducky settled himself comfortably into the overstuffed chair, grateful to be off of his feet even after walking such a short distance. He snorted. "Really, Mr. Solo. I may be a mere medical examiner, but even _I_ will notice when over the years a man who is an exact copy of myself appears periodically in my sphere. Even if he takes pains to remove himself once his presence is noted," he added. He wagged his finger at Kuryakin. "After one such event, I even did a short computer search with the aid of the NCIS databases."

McGee sat up in surprise. "You did? A computer search?" It was the wrong move; he sank back down, trying to pretend that the move was voluntary. With a sniff, Ziva grabbed his shoulders, easing him back into a reclining position.

"You found nothing, I hope." Kuryakin was not best pleased. "My data was _supposed_ to have been erased."

"Close to it," Ducky admitted. "You made it most difficult for me, Mr. Kuryakin. I believe I found one reference—something about a fire near a tailor's shop—but that was all."

"Apparently it was enough," Solo said to the air. He looked at Kuryakin. "Remind me to run a few searches of my own."

Kuryakin scowled. "So we could have avoided all of this?"

"What do you mean?" DiNozzo asked.

Kuryakin sighed. "My intentions were honorable, Dr. Mallard; as honorable as my apologies are sincere. My goal this past week was to remove you from the playing field, and by doing so protect your life. You should not have been exposed to sordid affairs such as this, merely because of coincidental similarity to me. Had I known that you were aware of my presence, I would simply have presented myself at your doorstep and enlisted your help." He scowled once more. "I still have no idea how your mother can tell us apart. No one else can."

"The dogs, too," Solo put in. "You must have a different scent."

McGee spoke up. "What about the PAMELA, boss? It will take a while to find a substitute for the emerald, but it can still be adapted to another gem. It's dangerous."

Gibbs shrugged. "Solo and I turned it over to another agency, and it's going to another warehouse. I think it's located somewhere in South Dakota. If someone is going to go look for it, they'll have to find South Dakota first, and it'll get harder from there."

Abby nodded. "_This_ time it's going to be lost for good."

Ziva's turn. "What about Commander Graybelle, Gibbs?"

"Yeah," DiNozzo put in. "I have a special interest in making sure he gets what's coming to him." He rubbed his shoulder, trying to scrub away the discomfort.

"He's finished," Gibbs informed them all. "His court-martial's less than a week away. Nobody wants him to go anywhere for a long, long time."

Mrs. Mallard appeared from the kitchen, Seaman Van Olnicker towering behind her. Each one wore a frilly apron but neither—and Gibbs checked—had a smudge of flour on his or her nose. Both held silver trays in their hands.

"Tea," Mrs. Mallard announced.

"And scones," Van Olnicker put in. He beamed. "Mrs. Mallard has the most _wonderful_ recipes!" He set the tray onto the coffee table, and began to hand out plates.

Mrs. Mallard wasn't finished. She too set down her tray, and headed straight for the corner cabinet.

Only Dr. Mallard recognized what she was after. "Mother!" he scolded. "I'm sure our guests don't want any—"

"Hush, Donald." Mrs. Mallard wasn't taking any back talk from her son. "This is good for what ails them." She held up a bottle of golden liquid, and everyone there recognized the label. Even more, they recognized one of the numbers written onto the label: thirty year old Scotch. She splashed a healthy dose into each tea cup before adding a hot steaming tea and passing them out. Ducky sighed, accepting his cup.

"Mr. Waverly was right: a remarkable woman." Solo held his tea cup high in the air in a salute. "To Mrs. Mallard!"

The others followed suit. "To Mrs. Mallard."

* * *

the end


End file.
